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The Black Plague of the 
American Continent 



BY 



D. f. Sutherland, A. B. 

Quitman, Texas 



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The Black Plague of the 
American Continent 

D. F. Sutherland, A. B. /4 <• 

Quitman, Texas 



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I two Gupies H 
• GOHY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1908 

BY 

D. F. SUTHERLAND 



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DEDICATED TO 

The Mothers of this Land. 



INTRODUCTION. 



I have but one reason for writing this little volume, and that is that 
it may bless those who read it. I write to save the boys, the girls, the 
young men and the young women/ the home, the wife, mother and her 
children; to save them from the scorching, withering and blighting effects 
of the liquor traffic and the trapping and selling pure, innocent white 
girls into the worst slavery ever known to this or other lands; to save 
them from ruin, remorse and death. 

I write to warn the fathers and mothers of this land, into whose care 
the Heavenly Father has so graciously given their tender offspring, and 
whose homes have been blessed with children, against the crime — and it 
is a crime, though done in ignorance — of giving their children alcohol 
before they can walk or talk or during the young and tender years, 
thereby creating an appetite for strong drink which may consume them 
in the years to come, and bring your own gray hairs down to the grave 
in trouble and sorrow. I write to save the homes from mourning and 
tears, wives and mothers from broken hearts, and children from poverty 
and ruin. I write to save the pure, innocent and sweet girls from being 
trapped and sold for immoral purposes and to save the boy and young 
man from the death of the gin mill. I write to scatter sunshine and 
gladness and happiness into the lives of the disconsolate and the broken- 
hearted. I write to save my country and her people from the awful and 
fearful calamity and doom which is coming and which will overtake us 
unless the whisky and white girl slavery is abolished. 

I shall not make the story long, for the whole is like unto the parts 
given you in this little volume. The cases mentioned are not isolated 
ones, hut are samples of thousands of others like them. They are not 
the result of the imagination, but real, and took place just as stated. 
May you read this book in the fear of the Lord and with an honest heart, 
bent on doing everything you can to help rid this country of these great, 
destroying evils. And now, may God bless you. 

D. F. SUTHERLAND. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN 

CONTINENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Worst Form of Slavery that Ever Existed Upon the American 

Continent. 

Why have we been so long asleep? Have we been dreaming? What 
is the matter with us that we sit still amidst such awful conditions 
and amidst such heartrending and soul-destroying scenes: in the midst 
of the darkest,, the blackest and most damnable plague that ever infested 
this or any other land? It is enough to make the heart's blood run cold 
and congeal in the veins as we look out upon this blighting, scorching 
and withering monsoon which is daily sweeping over this fair land — 
sweeping on to destruction the purest, the fairest and the best; sweeping 
on to a fearful and everlasting doom, year after year, thousands and 
thousands of innocent girls just budding into womanhood. Shall our 
people sleep on and dream on in the very midst of a slavery too horrible 
for description? Shall the destroyer of home and chiklhood be allowed 
to continue to devour the pure girls of this country, from the north to 
the south, and from the east to the west? Xot if I can help it. May 
the God of love, mercy and truth put it into the hearts of the American 
people to arise and assert their manhood and their womanhood, and in 
the name of the love they bear for home, happiness, virtue and purity, 
and in the name of the God whom they serve and worship, strike this 
monster destroyer down. In this little volume I appeal to the purest, 
the noblest and the best that is within you. and my prayer is now. while 
I write, that I shall not make this appeal in vain. I make it in the 
name and for the sake of home, happiness and virtue; in the name and 
for the sake of our girls and our mothers; in the name of all that is 
pure, holy, lovely and good. I make this appeal to every true man and 
to every noble woman; to the churches, pastors and to church members. 
I make it in the name of Christ and His religion. Shall I make it 
in vain? Dear reader, under God, where do you stand in the coming 
conflict to save the girls of this country from a life ten thousand times 
worse than death? 

After the war was over, when the smoke of battle had cleared away, 
when the cannon's last roar had died on the distant hills, when Lee and 



8 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

Grant shook hands over the bloody chasm of four long years of blood 
and death and met as foes no longer, when the soldiers, clothed in their 
tattered garments of the blue or the gray, came back to the old home 
and to loved ones, to fight no longer the battles of war, but the battles 
of peace, we then thought that slavery had ended, but, instead of negro 
slavery, there came another of a different kind, the awfulness of which 
can never be told; a slavery of thousands and thousands of as pure, as- 
innocent white girls as ever lived in any land. Oh, dear God in Heaven, 
look down upon these dear girls with great and tender compassion, and 
put it now into the hearts of the people to end this slave trade, which 
wrecks thousands of once happy homes and thousands of girls in the pure 
morning of life, dragging these dear ones down, down, down to the awful 
black depths of despair. 

I have sometimes thought that I had a fair command of language, 
but I can find no words which will portray this destruction of virtue, of 
home, of happiness, and of all that is the nearest and dearest to the 
precious mothers of this land — their own dear children. If all the sticks 
were pens and all the oceans were ink; if all the men of the earth, the 
angels in heaven and the demons in hell were to write for a thousand 
years, they could not portray the awfulness, the blackness and the dam- 
nableness of this modern-day white slavery — this traffic in innocent white 
girls. 

Do you ask me if girls — pure, innocent and unsuspecting white girls — 
are bought and sold? I tell you that there is now going on in this coun- 
try an organized and systematic traffic in pure American girls which 
should cause our people more alarm than any one thing in all our his- 
tory, the like of which has no parallel upon the face of the earth. Girls, 
many of whom are yet wearing short dresses, trapped and sold like 
cattle; sold into houses of prostitution to satisfy and gratify the wild, 
mad and surging passions of men, heated up to the boiling point by the 
demon alcohol! Girls sold for profit in this civilized, Christian land! In 
a land of Bibles, schools, churches and colleges! Yea, under the very 
shadows of our churches and in hearing of the gospel of peace and good 
will to men. A likely negro slave would bring a thousand dollars into 
the pocket of his legal owner before the war, but now our own dear girls, 
as pure as the snow and who never sinned, are trapped and sold by 
procurers, foul fiends incarnate^ to madams of houses of ill-fame for 
twenty -five dollars to one hundred dollars each. Reader, suppose one 
of these were your own little girl, the one you had held in your arms 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 9 

and pressed to your bosom so tenderly and fondly! Would your heart 
not break? God! what if it were my own little girl! When I saw 
other dear mothers' girls, whom they love as dearly as I love my own 
sweet girls, then my heart almost broke for them. I can see them now, 
in their lonely, sad and darkened homes, with the light and joy of their 
lives all gone out of them, sitting by their desolate firesides and, like 
Rachel, "weeping for their children and will not be comforted because 
they are not." 

Many of these dear ones, before they were trapped and sold away from 
home and mother, would kneel in the nighttime by her side and say her 
little prayer: 

"Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep; 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take." 

Thousands and thousands of girls who are as pure as the morning dew- 
drops are annually decoyed, snared, trapped and sold in this land over 
which Old Glory floats as it waves and bends in the winds of heaven. 
Trapped by fiends incarnate and sold into the slavery of the brothel, to 
become the forced and unwilling chattels of the worst tyrannical masters 
and monsters that ever disgraced any civilized land. 

I ask you, dear reader, to join in with me in labors of love and mercy, 
and let us work to save these mothers from broken hearts and their 
children from the agony of the dark days of desolation and their lives 
from ruin. 

We are standing today face to face with a slave traffic and its ally, 
the liquor traffic, which will sweep this government from its very founda- 
tions unless there is an end put to both. We may sleep on and dream 
on if we will, but the awakening time will come in all of its fearfulness 
and terror. Nations, like individuals, must reap what they sow, and the 
reaping time is sure to conp. Perchance it may be delayed, but the 
longer delayed the more fearful will be the consequences. The liquor 
traffic and the traffic in pure, innocent girlhood are Siamese twins, both 
born in hell, and the devil is their father. It is impossible to discuss the 
one without discussing the other. The saloon is the front door of the 
brothel. The traffic in virtue and the legalized liquor traffic must end, 
or else this government must fall. On their annihilation hinges the des- 
tiny of the American people, the perpetuity of their institutions, the 



10 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

safety of their children, the progress of Christianity, the prosperity and 
happiness of the people, and the continuation of this Republic. This gov- 
ernment was founded to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility 
and to promote the happiness and general welfare of the people — men, 
women and children — and to guarantee to them and to their homes safety 
and protection. These inalienable rights were vouchsafed to the people 
by the founders of this government, and these rights can not be impaired 
or destroyed without impairing or destroying the government itself. The 
three sure pillars on which this government stands are the home, the 
church and the school. Injure or destroy these pillars and the govern- 
ment will be injured or destroyed. The three great enemies of the home, 
church and school are the liquor traffic, the house of prostitution and 
the gambling hell. The sale of liquor destroys the inalienable rights of 
the people, their happiness and their prosperity; destroys home, property, 
virtue and life itself. It is a dangerous and destructive policy for this 
government to vouchsafe to the people certain inalienable rights and 
then sell, for so much money, a permit to a few of its citizens to destroy 
thousands of others of its citizens, and which has never failed to destroy 
these same inalienable rights. A government divided against itself can 
not stand. It is no prophecy when I say that one of two* things must 
happen — one is that the government must cut loose from the liquor traf- 
fic, stop granting privileges to one class of its citizens which enables them 
to prey upon and destroy another class of its citizens, or else this gov- 
ernment must fall. I say this is no prophecy; it is an inevitable con- 
clusion based upon sound logic, facts and all history. No free govern- 
ment can long survive a policy which annually destroys over one hundred 
thousand of its citizens, wrecks homes in every part of its territory; 
which leaves thousands of helpless women and children begging for food, 
shelter and clothing, fills our jails and penitentiaries with its criminals 
and our asylums with its insane; which is in league with a traffic, a 
slave trade in pure, innocent girls and which sends over forty thousand of 
them every year to houses of prostitution; which fills the land with 
broken-hearted mothers and many once happy homes with mourning and 
tears, the cemeteries with the bodies of its victims and hell with the 
shrieks of the damned, and which leaves nothing in its wake but deso- 
lation and ruin in this world and woe and despair in the world to come. 
I repeat again, that this government can not long survive such a policy. 
If the liquor traffic and the traffic in purity and virtue are not destroyed, 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 11 

then these traffics will destroy this government as sure as the waters run 
and the sun shines. 

"Thou shalt not kill" is one of the prohibitory laws which does not 
prohibit a licensed rum -seller from dealing out his instruments of death 
and hell. 

What does it mean to the government, State or National, in legalizing 
and authorizing the liquor traffic? Only one thing — to get revenue, 
about, one hundred and forty million dollars annually. This is a vast 
sum of money, but not as much as one billion and four hundred million 
dollars, which sum is annually spent in this country for alcohol, and 
which had better be sent up in the names a thousand times. Nearly a 
billion and a half dollars spent and nothing in return but one hundred 
thousand dead victims, one hundred and fifty thousand widows and or- 
phans, three hundred and fifty thousand reduced to poverty or pauperism; 
wives weighed down with grief, sorrow and want; broken-hearted and 
helpless children growing up in ignorance, beggary and vice; men reduced 
to wretchedness, poverty and dishonor, degraded and polluted; millions 
of dollars invested in this business of making men and boys drunkards 
and in producing the desolation and ruin of women and children, which, 
if employed in the useful pursuits of life and directed by the talents and 
the time wasted in drinking houses, would add untold millions to our 
aggregate wealth and make as many thousands of happy families as are 
now made miserable by the liquor traffic. 

But this is not all of the fearful destruction caused by this traffic. Not 
content with destroying our men and boys by the tens of thousands; not 
content with making thousands of widows and orphans, broken-hearted 
wives, sisters and mothers and wrecked homes; not content with filling 
the land with sorrow, mourning and tears, with the direst of poverty and 
sore want; not content with filling jails, penitentiaries and asylums with 
its victims; not content with taking from the people other untold mil- 
lions to prosecute the crimes it causes to be committed and the injury 
done to society by these same crimes; not content with all of these 
things, the liquor traffic, in league with the procurers, fiends incarnate, 
enters thousands of happy homes and takes therefrom thousands of 
pure, happy and innocent girls and sells them to houses of ill-fame to 
gratify the wild, surging passions of those urged on by alcohol taking pos- 
session of the brain and hearts of men, adding fuel on which to feed the 
flames of unholy lusts. 

No, my friends, our government can not afford, or long be a partner 
in such an awful iniquity, for the sake of revenue. 



12 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 



CHAPTER II. 

I shall state some of the facts as they exist now in this, the dawn of 
the Twentieth Century, and I shall state nothing but the facts as they 
have been gathered together by this writer and others, who would not 
misrepresent anything under any circumstances whatever. For four years 
I have been in this investigation, and I shall put the reader in possession 
of information, awful as it is, which will be of untold value to the homes 
of this country; to fathers, mothers and their children. 

There is one thing that I want the reader to know now, before I proceed 
any further, and that is out of the three hundred and fifty thousand 
girls and women now in houses of ill-fame, three out of every four of 
them are not there from choice, not there of their own free will and 
accord, but they are there as the work of some villain or other. Over 
forty thousand of them are annually trapped and sold into this slavery 
and, without their knowledge or consent, sold for immoral purposes by 
fiends incarnate. Over four hundred thousand pure and innocent girls 
trapped and sold in ten years! This is the truth. Does it not make your 
blood boil within your veins? If not, then may God have mercy on your 
soul. You ask me how is this done, and what are the means employed? 
I am going to tell you. This destruction of our girls is carried on by 
some one or more of the following ways or channels : 

First, by promise of marriage and seduction; second, by mock marriage; 
third, by marriage and desertion; fourth, by saloons and wine-rooms; 
fifth, by the dance and high wines; sixth, by drugs; seventh, by bad and 
vile companions; eighth, by children not being properly instructed as to 
the use and abuse of the sexual organs by their parents at an early age 
in life, and, ninth, by starvation wages. 

One of these procurers, or fiends incarnate, comes into some town or 
country village. He gives it out that he is a traveling man taking a vaca- 
tion and wanted to get to some quiet place where he could rest up. He 
soon takes his bearings and fixes his mind on a certain victim, often the 
daughter of some poor widow woman or some girl he thinks he can work 
without any immediate danger of a shotgun in the hands of her father 
or brothers. He is well dressed, polite, a smooth talker, one of these 
all-round good fellows. He manages to get an introduction to this un- 
suspecting girl, who knows nothing of the ways of the world beyond the 
^circle of her home. Xot very long till you will find him taking her to par- 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 13 

ties, to picnics, and. if she is religiously inclined, he will take her to 
prayermeeting, Sunday school and church, and make out that he, too, is 
full of religion to the brim. He shows her every courtesy and attention, 
and the poor girl finds that she is in love with him, the very thing he 
intended and wanted, and, strange to say, that very often her own silly 
and unsuspecting mother is positively delighted that her girl has so far 
outstripped all her girl friends. They become engaged, and now how her 
poor heart beats for joy. He sits down and writes a letter to the 
"madani v of a house of ill-fame, for whom he is working, and tells her 
that he will soon land his victim. She knows what kind of an answer to 
send him. She makes out like she is his sister and will be so delighted to 
have a little sister-in-law. He shows this letter to this poor, unsuspecting 
girl. He tells her that his sister wants them to get married at her house, 
and that he wants her to go on to his sister's and get ready, and that 
he will come by that time and then they will get married. If the girl's 
mother objects to her daughter's going, he manages in some way or tells 
her some big lie and gets the girl off. She goes with him to the depot: 
he puts her on the train for some city. When she arrives, she is met by 
some one as per agreement, put into a closed carriage and whirled away 
to a house of ill-fame, and lost to the world forever. There she is locked 
up, drugged, red liquor forced down her throat, forced to submit to some 
human beast, till at last she is utterly crushed. The mother, back in 
the old home, weeps on and on. day and night, and dies of a broken 
heart. The destroyer of this girl goes elsewhere to trap another victim 
for destruction. If she was young, pretty and of good physique, the 
'•'madam'' of this house of ill-fame paid this fiend 8100 and expenses so 
soon as she got the key turned on her. Some girls are sold for $25: some 
$50: some $75, and those just blooming into womanhood sell for as much 
as $100 when pretty and of good form. 

Dear girls, if you value your home, your happiness and your life, you 
had better be careful and have nothing to do whatever with strange 
young men of whose life and character and history you absolutely know 
nothing. This is good advice, and you will be wise to take it. If you 
say that you are in no danger, you say just what thousands of others 
have said whose lives have been destroyed and whose happiness has been 
crushed out of their hearts forever. Mothers, you had better be careful 
as to whom yon admit into your homes. You had better know who they 
are and what their business is. I shall speak more fully to mothers and 
their daughters in another part of this book. » 



14 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

There is another class of these villains whose avocation is also to 
traduce and destroy the lives of innocent girls. The first part of their 
methods is somewhat like that above described, the difference being that 
a pretended marriage ceremony is gone through with. The girl's consent 
to marriage being had, this viper persuades her to run away with him. 
He takes her to some strange city where a pretended marriage license is 
procured, gives the license to one of his "pals" who is onto the job and 
pretends to be a clergyman. This "pal" pretends to marry them, and the 
poor girl thinks that she is really married. This wretch soon tires of 
her, and the first thing that this poor, unsuspecting girl knows, she is 
landed into a house of ill-fame and is there informed that she was never 
married at all. Here she is lost to the world, red liquor and drugs poured 
down her throat and forced to submit to the beastly passions of all 
callers, or turned over and kept as the mistress of some wealthy libertine 
till he tires of her. 

Thousands of pure and innocent girls are going to ruin over this rnock- 
marriage route. Girls, let me say to you that if a young man refuses 
to marry you in your own home, in the presence of your own people and 
by your own minister, or some one else whom you know, you give him 
his walking papers and tell him to never let you lay eyes on him again 
while he lives. 

Only a short time ago two young girls, one 14 and the other 15 years 
old, were running away to get married at Hot Springs, Arkansas, to two 
worthless scoundrels who had not the remotest idea of marrying them. 
An officer in Arkansas came across these two girls while they were wait- 
ing at the depot for the Hot Springs train. This officer saw that these 
girls were not grown and that they were alone and had never traveled 
but little, if any. This he judged from their actions, as any one well can 
do. He questioned them as to where they lived, who they were, where 
they were going and why. They were not inclined to talk or tell him 
anything till he told them that he had a telegram from their parents, 
asking him to be on the lookout for two girls and that he would have to 
take charge of them. He carried them to a hotel and gave them their 
dinner. Soon a sure -enough telegram came from their parents in answer 
to one sent by the officer. They requested the officer to care for the girls 
till they could reach them, which was the next day. These girls had been 
persuaded to leave home by two strange young men who had promised to 
marry them at Hot Springs. Had it not been for that kind officer these 
girls would have landed at Hot Springs and this would have been the 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 15 

last of thein, for Hot Springs is a hot town in more ways than one. 
These two girls were glad enough to get back to their Texas home with 
papa and mama, and are there now. yet pure, contented and happy. 

Girls, your homes may be humble and you may not have as fine clothes 
on want, but, listen, there is no spot on this earth which is as dear 
and as sate as is home., and no name or friend so kind and true as mother. 
Is, don't, for your sake, please don't leave home, be it ever so humble. 
and mother and go away to the city for employment. Dangers are lurking 
there at every turn. Parents, keep your children in the home. It is 
safer thefe than out in the cold and wicked world. 

Another method by which unsuspecting girls by the thousands are de- 
coyed, trapped and sold into houses of ill-fame and for immoral purposes is 
by decoy advertisements. Some of them read about as follows: "Wanted — 
A nice young girl as a companion for wealthy lady; good wages to the right 
party." "Wanted — A nice girl for traveling companion of a rich lady: good, 
wages: give full description of yourself in first letter.'- •"Wanted — Nice gii 
for companion for lady who is alone: good place if found suitable: give fuli 
particulars as to yourself. " "Wanted — A country girl to do light house 
work in the city: good wages to the right party: in answering give full 
particulars: girl preferred having no incumbrance.''' 

A girl reads one of these advertisements and makes up her mind that 
this is the very thing she wants, and that, if she can get the place, it 
will help her to aid her parents to support her little brothers and sisters. 
She answers one of these advertisements and tells all about herself. Soon 
she gets an answer, telling her that she is the very girl wanted, and to 
come right along at once. She writes again and tella them that she is 
coming and when she will start. She gets ready, the time comes when 
she is going to leave the old home. She kisses papa good-by: her mother 
takes her child in her arms and covers her with kisses, as great tears. 
like no one can shed but a mother, roll down her cheeks. Then she clasps 
brothers and sisters in her arms. and. last of all. the baby: says farewell, 
and she is gone out into the dark world, little knowing the awful fate 
which awaits her. Mother, dear mother, if she is not your child she is 
some mother's child. The train whirls her on and on. carrying her to a 
fearful, living death. Would to God that she had died when she was a 
little child. At last she reaches her destination, and with her heart 
filled with joyous expectations, she alights from the train. Better that 
she drop dead here. She is met by some one. as per agreement, who 
puts her in a closed carriage anl carries her to a house of ill-fame, and 



16 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

here she is lost to the world as completely as if the grave had swallowed 
her up. In the awful agony and bitterness of her prison home — no, not 
home, but an earthly hell — her mind goes back to the dear old home, back 
to papa, back to mama, back to the little brothers and sisters and back 
to the little babe in mother's arms. Would to God that I could picture 
here her memories now. Sweet girl, broken-hearted, disconsolate and 
crushed in your prison house, let others turn their backs upon you now 
if they will, but, God being my helper, I will never do it. I would rather 
have my right arm severed from my body than to turn from you now 
in this awful hour. Some fiend incarnate got $25, $50, $75 or '$100 for 
this piece of work. I don't want to be understood as saying that all 
advertisements like the above are decoy advertisements, for they are 
not. I do want to say that no girl in the world should think for one 
moment of accepting employment from those who advertise for help with- 
out having a full and thorough investigation made of the place, the busi- 
ness and the person advertising. Fathers and mothers should see that 
this investigation is made. Write to the pastor of your church, to the 
secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association, or to the secre- 
tary of the W. C. T. U., and ask one of these parties to make a personal 
investigation of the person and the place and to tell you whether or not 
it is a desirable position which has been offered you. Any of these parties 
will gladly do this for you. This has been done, and the place when lo- 
cated was found to be none other than a house of ill-fame. Best 
of all, however, is to stay at home with your parents and brothers and 
sisters, unless you are forced to make your own way in the world. 

The wine-rooms of saloons are the avenues which lead straight to houses 
of prostitution, and they are enough to forever damn the saloon business 
in this country. If the reader could only know of the awful, dark trage- 
dies which take place in these wine -rooms, the revelation would be 
shocking because of its blackness. 

One of these human vultures who makes it his business to trap and 
sell innocent girls by the aid of the wine -room and a pal at the saloon 
bar spots a victim on the street or in some establishment which employs 
girl labor, and makes up his mind to sell her to the "madam" of a house 
of ill-fame for whom he is working in procuring girls. 

In some way or other he manages to get acquainted with this girl 
whom he has spotted and who is often a working girl from the country 
or some small town. He takes her to the theater and ice cream parlors 
and other places of amusement and pleasure, and leads her — poor, unsus- 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 17 

pecting girl — to believe that it is his greatest pleasure to give her a nice 
and pleasant time while she is away from home and among strangers. 
She appreciates his many acts of kindness, for the wages of these working 
girls in the city are barely sufficient to pay their board and perhaps a 
little left over to purchase a few clothes, but nothing for luxuries or 
pleasure. He has succeeded in gaining her confidence and he goes to his 
pal, a bartender, where there is a wine-room, and tells him to be ready, 
that he is going to bring around his little country lassie tliis evening. 
The time of her destruction is now at hand, and she is led by this villain 
"as a lamb to the slaughter." He calls on her for an evening walk, and 
as they pass along the streets they come to a place over which is a sign, 
"Ladies' Parlor," or "Ladies' Entrance." He says to her: "Let's go in 
here and get a soda or lemonade." Not knowing where she is going or 
suspecting any danger or treachery, she enters and takes her seat at a 
table with her destroyer. Lemonade is ordered and her glass is doped. She 
drinks it and soon begins to feel drowsy and ere long she is in an un- 
conscious condition. She is taken and secreted till late at night, then 
put into a closed carriage and carried to a house of ill-fame, where her 
destroyer is paid the price for her. Here she has hot liquor forced down 
her throat and her body outraged again and again. 

This has been done thousands of times, and is now being done night 
after night in some wine -room or other. How long will the American 
people permit such diabolical outrages to be perpetrated upon the inno- 
cent girls and upon the homes of this country? Shall the pure girls of 
America be trapped and sold into such damning slavery? Where are the 
brave men and their sons who wore the blue or the gray? Where are 
the women and their daughters who kept the lights burning in the win- 
dows while husbands and sons fought on the side of the North or the 
South? Is conscience dead, or are we sleeping and dreaming? Where is the 
church of the living God, with her thousands of pastors and millions of 
members? Will not the church, the preachers and church members rise 
up in the name of the Christ and put an end to this, the worst form of 
all slavery that ever disgraced this land or any other; a disgrace to the 
church, to Christianity and a reproach upon the cause of Christ. There are 
over four million church members who are voters. If these would vote as 
Christ taught them to pray when He said, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven,'' the saloons and wine-rooms of this coun- 
try would be a thing of the past. Men who profess to know the name of 
Christ, and who expect to get home to heaven when they die, should 



18 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

never cast their votes for the saloon or liquor traffic, which they well 
know destroys thousands of men and boys, wrecks thousands of homes 
and preys upon purity and virtue. 

Starvation wages have been the downfall of many American girls. This 
is a sad and deplorable state of affairs. Here is a girl, and there are 
thousands of them in ail the larger cities, working in a large mercantile 
establishment, or elsewhere, for $4 a week. Her board and lodging at 
the cheapest places cost her $3 per week and her car fare 60 cents per 
week — 40 cents left of her salary each week with which to clothe herself 
and supply the other necessaries of life. Tell me what such girls who 
have to make their own way in the world by labor are to do? What can 
they do? Taking advantage of her situation and necessities, human 
fiends who have wealth or plenty of this world's goods, oftentimes her 
own employer, seek to accomplish her ruin, and, by promise of affluence 
and plenty, oftentimes succeed. 

Girls and young women who do the same kind of work that men do, 
and who do it as well as men do, should have the same wages as are paid 
to men. Labor performed by the men and women of this country creates 
its wealth, and this labor should share in the profits which it produces. 
Labor should not be required to give or donate a large per cent of what 
it makes or produces to men who earn no part of what is produced. Each 
laborer — man or woman — should have his or her full share of the profits, 
and when one man gets more than his share, others must get less than 
their share. I believe in the Golden Rule, and not in a rule of gold. 
Any economic policy which makes it possible for one man or set of men 
to pile up thousands and millions of dollars which they have not earned, 
but which was earned by the labor of others, is a dangerous policy, and 
rotten to the core. Capital, which has neither feeling, life nor soul, an 
inanimate something, should not rule men who have feelings, life, mind 
and soul. Labor should employ capital instead of capital employing labor. 
Only a short while ago a dividend of five million dollars was declared to 
one woman in Chicago who owned the controlling interest in a large de- 
partment store. Hundreds of girls were employed in this store on wages 
which would barely give them scanty food and the clothes they were 
compelled to have. Girls and young women working for this millionaire 
woman on wages which did not provide them half enough to eat, on starva- 
tion wages! How cruel, heartless, outrageous and merciless! No wonder 
that some of these dear girls in this store fell a prey to demons who 
knew their sad condition when offered rest, affluence and plenty to eat and 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 19 

to wear. I say now that the laboring people of this country can not and 
will not long tolerate an economic system which allows any person, like 
this Chicago millionaire woman, to coin millions annually out of the toil, 
sweat and blood of working girls on starvation wages, which force or cause 
thousands to sell their bodies for bread to allay the pangs of hunger and 
for clothes to shield them from the north wind's breath. 

May the God of heaven and earth have mercy and pity upon the working 
girls and young women now filling shops, factories, stores and other 
places by the thousands in every city of this land. While writing this, 
I know a girl who went to a city to get work. The best she was offered 
was $3 per week, and, having no money, she was forced to take it. The 
cheapest board and lodging she could get was $15 per month. What will 
become of her is hard to tell. She was pure as the snow. How long she 
can stay pure I don't know, unless she gets more pay, surrounded by the 
many snares and temptations of a wicked city. 

Girls, let me tell you something — you girls who must make your own 
way in the world. Rather than go to the city and get a poor, puny clerk- 
ship on wages which will not board and clothe you, you work in some 
home in the country or in some country village. In this way you will 
get your boards and your wages will more than clothe you, and you will 
be safe. 

Women who employ white girls to help them in their home affairs and 
to see after their children should not be guilty of calling such girls "serv- 
ant girls," and thus humiliate them without any cause. If our women 
who employ these girls will treat them kindly and keep the "servant"' 
idea out of their minds, and treat them as a necessary part of the family, 
thousands of these girls would gladly become employes in the home, in- 
stead of seeking a sickly clerkship in the city. These girls have pride 
about them, and they don't want to be looked down upon and classed 
with negro cooks. Women who need girls in the home have a great op- 
portunity to save thousands of them from destruction caused by the 
snares and temptations of city life. This is no time for servants and 
masters among a free and Christian people, and no woman should want 
any respectable white girl to be her "servant," and she is heartless and 
cruel who does do it. May God put it into the hearts of women who 
employ girls to drop this "servant" notion and that they may treat 
them kindly and make it pleasant for them. 

There are thousands of wealthy libertines constantly on the watch for 
some pure, young girl, only to accomplish her ruin. I remember an oc- 



20 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

currence stated by Mrs. Charlton Edholm, that great woman, in her 
work of love and mercy for fallen women. A wealthy libertine, a man 
who had a wife and girls of his own, told the "madam" of a house of ill- 
fame that he would give her $500 if she would procure him a nice young 
girl who had been virtuous all her life. This "madam" agreed to get 
him a girl that would fill the requirements. She took a negro woman 
who was working for her into the flat, and told her what kind of a girl 
she wanted for the rich gentleman (?) and for this negro woman to be 
on the lookout as girls passed by the front door and to decoy one into 
the house. One morning a beautiful girl about 15 years old was passing 
along while this negro was washing off the front steps. The negro said 
to her : "Lordy, mercy ! honey, your dress is torn in the back ; come in 
and let me fix it." The unsuspecting girl went in, and was no sooner in 
the house than the door was locked. By force she was carried to a 
room and locked up. This man was informed that his girl had been 
procured — one that would suit him exactly. He went to this house of 
ill-fame and was conducted to the room where this young, innocent girl 
was a prisoner. The door was unlocked, and he entered the room where 
she was. The girl rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck and 
cried out: "Papa, papa, how did you find out where I am! Oh, papa, I 
am so glad that you have come to take me away. Where am I, papa, and 
w r hat made them lock me up here? Oh, papa, take me away; take me 
home to mama." What could his feelings have been when he met his own 
child? What would have been her fate had she been some one else's child? 
I tell you that no girl is safe from the clutches of these fiends incarnate. 
They not only invade the homes, but the schools and colleges as well. 
Only a short time ago one of these inhuman ghouls visited some business 
colleges in Illinois for the purpose, he stated, to procure lady stenogra- 
phers for the California Southern railroad, agreeing to pay their expenses 
to Los Angeles and a good salary as soon as they could get there and go 
to work. He was having great success until one of the teachers of the 
college began an investigation to find out whether he was reliable or not. 
When this scoundrel found out that he was going to be investigated, he 
at once went to parts unknown, but not till he had procured several 
young girls and had them well on the road to destruction. As soon as 
these girls arrived in Los Angeles they were taken charge of by the sec- 
retary of the Young Women's Christian Association, who had been notified 
by a telegram sent from Illinois. The girls were sent back to their 
homes before, on this occasion, it was too late. The investigation showed 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 21 

that there was no such railroad as the California Southern, but that there 
was the Southern California, and that it had out no agents to employ 
stenographers. If these girls had fallen into other hands at Los Angeles 
they would have gone the way thousands of others have gone — to destruc- 
tion and ruin. 

Dear reader, the extent of this traffic, this white slave trade in pure, 
innocent and unsuspecting girls, is alarming. It is bad enough and it is 
getting worse. Just think of it seriously for one moment — forty thousand 
or more innocent girls bought and sold each year: forty thousand sold 
into slavery last year and over forty thousand will be sold during this 
year for immoral purposes and into a slavery that is worse than death 
itself! Every one of these was some dear mother's child. Some mother's 
heart is broken and she will die of grief for her child. What if she was 
your child or my child? Must darkness and gloom settle down over our 
own home before we will move? Is this what it will take to move us? 
If so, God pity our poor, hard hearts. I can see one of these mothers back 
in the old home, sitting, thinking, thinking of her child, and wondering 
if she will ever see her face again, as the tears roll down her pale cheeks. 
I see her as she goes and gets the little picture and looks again at the 
face of her child, so innocent, sweet and loving. I see her again as she 
looks in the drawer and takes out the shoes and the little dress which 
her own little Mary once wore. She sees, with a sad heart, the vacant 
chair at the table where her Mary sat. In her dreams she sees her Mary, 
her own dear child, at home again, playing with the children under the 
old oak, and hears her voice as she sings her childish songs as of yore. 
She wakes in sadness and hears only the mournful dirge of the night 
winds sighing: "Tour Mary is gone forever, you will never see her face 
again in this world.'' The poor mother sighs on and weeps on and on 
and dies of a broken heart. Over on the hillside is a new-made grave, 
and on the tombstone I would write these sad words: "This mother died 
of a broken heart, caused by a villain who trapped and sold her child. 
Mary, into slavery, to be consumed, soul and body, by the beastly pas- 
sions of men." 

Where is Mary now? Go look in the city hospital, or on the poor 
farm, and you may find her dying with some loathsome disease. 
Look in the morgue, you may find her lifeless body there. Look in the 
potter's field, she may be sleeping there; if she is not now, she will be 
very soon. Who is Mary? She is one of the forty thousand trapped and 
sold each and everv vear into a slaverv a thousand times worse than 



22 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

death; sold at the price of $25 to $100 each. Who is Mary's mother? 
She is only one of the thousands of mothers who have died or are now 
dying of a broken heart, caused by some fiend incarnate, who decoyed 
her child away from home and the scenes of her childhood and sold her 
into the slavery of the brothel. Xegro slavery, which shook this country 
from center to circumference, is not to be compared for one moment to 
the awfulness, the fearfulness and the blackness of this slavery of white 
girls; yes, white girls, pure, innocent white girls. Thousands and thou- 
sands of the now little, innocent girls — one of them may be your girl — 
are going to be trapped and sold into this damnable slavery unless this 
traffic is stopped. If a mature woman will deliberately throw herself 
away, it is sad, but can not be helped. But when it comes to trapping and 
selling young, innocent girls into slavery, I say that the people of this 
country should rise up as one man in the strength of their manhood 
and womanhood, and end this dastardly business or die in the attempt. 
These destroyers of innocent girls should be hung as high as Haman. 

Wake up, people: arise W. C. T. U.; church of the Anointed One, gird 
on your armor: Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., and all lovers of home, 
purity, virtue, motherhood and childhood, form the battle line, for the 
trumpet of God has called you to duty and to battle, to wipe out this 
black plague from off the face of the American continent. God Himself 
has declared it, that if we refuse to do this that He will require their 
blood at our hands, for "this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are 
snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses; they are for a 
prey and none delivereth; for a spoil and none saith, restore." "What 
shall we do for our little sister?" "Woe be unto him that knoweth his 
duty and doeth it not." "Watchman, sound the trumpet, and if the people 
will not hear you I will require their blood at their hands." "Thy will 
be done on earth as it is in heaven." "Do unto others as you would have 
others do unto you." "He that hath this world's goods and seeth his 
brother in. need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion against 
him. how dwelleth the love of God in him?" "Woe unto him that giveth 
his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him and makest him 
drunken." "The cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee 
and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory." Dear reader, shall any of 
these verses from the Bible be used as a testimony against us or any 
of these woes come upon us? The Lord has said it and His words shall 
stand. 

Dearly beloved, let us live for two worlds. Let us do our duty in this 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 23 

one while we stay, and thereby lay up treasures in heaven. We should 
not forget that he pleases God the most who serves humanity the best. 
Let us live for the most and best which we can put into the world for 
the general welfare and happiness of the people, and not for what we 
can get out of the world to consume upon our own selves. He who loses 
his selfish life and lives for the good of others shall find a broader life, 
filled with joy. peace and happiness. Such a life is not found upon the 
shallow shoals of emotionalism or sentiment alism, but in doing positive 
good; in making others purer, better and happier: in scattering sunshine 
and gladness in the dark and bleak places of human existence; in lifting 
up the fallen and in administering to those in need or in distress; in heal- 
ing broken hearts and wiping away the tears of sorrow, grief and woe. 
Not a life spent and lost in the wild, mad and crazy rush of money- 
getting, with soul, heart and mind commercialized and petrified; for such 
a life ruins everyone it touches, blasts the higher and better purposes of 
the soul and is despised in the sight of our Maker. Such a life is lost 
here and lost forever. Give us a life, dear God, such as you would have 
us to live; a life lifted above the things which must perish with their 
using; a life in which we lift others up to purer and better things, to 
brighter and happier days; a positive, active and working life to accom- 
plish the things of this world that ought to be done. Not a negative life 
which does no harm and little good: not a selfish life which is used up 
to satisfy our own selfish ends and purposes, and which always ends in 
failure. But give us a life spent in doing good as we rapidly pass through 
this world, and, as we pass this way but once, let us live soberly and 
righteously in this present world. 

'•'There are lonely hearts to cherish, 

While the days are going by; 
There are weary souls who perish, 

While the days are going by. 
If a smile we can renew, 
As our journey we pursue. 
Oh, the good we all may do, 

While the days are going by.'' 



24 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 



CHAPTER III. 

In this chapter I shall introduce the reader to some of the dear and 
precious girls, with a short and true story of their lives. Some of these 
girls are yet living, and some have crossed over the river of death and 
are safe at home with God. But for their sakes, living or dead, I shall 
not give their real names. Those that I mention are a few of the forty 
thousand sold each year into such slavery as can not be described. 

I knew a beautiful young girl, the pride of the mother's heart and the 
joy of the home; a girl of the Sunday school, and who always sang in 
the choir at church. She was only 15 years of age. One night this girl 
was persuaded — the mother finally giving her consent — to attend a public 
ball. At this ball high wines were served to all who could be induced to 
drink. After much persuasion and coaxing, and seeing church members 
drinking of the wine, this girl lifted the glass to her lips for the first 
time in life. In the excitement and whirl of the dance, she took the 
second glass, but of a different kind, and this glass got in its work. No, 
it was the first glass that did the work. It's always the first glass that 
makes the drunkard and the last glass makes the drunkard a sober man. 
Again and again she drank the wine. She became intoxicated, and was 
led from the dance hall by some one out into the darkness of the night 
and placed in a room all alone till the people quit passing on the streets. 
Then she was placed in a closed carriage, and when she came to herself 
she was in a strange place — locked up in a house of ill-fame. Here she 
was forced to drink red-hot liquor, threatened with death if she raised 
any alarm, and outraged till she was almost dead. After two months' 
search she was located in this house and rescued by the mother and her 
friends and taken home, where she died in a few days from brain fever. 
In less than three months her mother was taken to a madhouse, wild and 
raving mad, crying day and night and pulling her hair, saying, "Where is 
my child? where is my child? Oh, tell me, where is my child?" Her 
destroyer and the destroyer of her mother as well had received the price 
for betraying this girl into a house of prostitution. He fled the country 
to ply his avocation in a more congenial clime. 

Mothers, thousands of girls have gone straight to destruction over the 
high -wine and ballroom route. From here they fell from the heights of 
heaven to the depths of hell. 

Mother, as you love your child, teach her the awful dangers lurking in 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 25 

the round dance and high wines. If you do not, some sad day you may 
wish you had. 

Near the town of C. was a happy Christian home, and in this home 
was a refined Christian girl, whose mother was one of the best women 
that ever lived, and she almost idolized her child. Into this quiet country 
community, where this mother and daughter lived, came a well-dressed 
and handsome young man, who, by his politeness and gentlemanly ways, 
succeeded in ingratiating himself into the affections of this country girl, 
and by promise of marriage accomplished her ruin. Well do these seducers 
know that the road to a girl's ruin runs through her heart, and to get 
her affections is his winning card in the game. To hide her shame she 
consented, after he had avowed to her again that he would yet marry 
her, to accompany him to the city. She was there placed in a house of 
ill-fame by this scoundrel and an operation performed on her which 
nearly ended her life. She recovered only to find out that she was a 
prisoner. In every possible way did she try to convey to her mother 
where she was, but without avail. For months she was subjected and 
forced to submit to outrage after outrage, and every hope of her soul 
and life gone out of her forever. When she resisted and tried to fight 
off her destroyers, she was, by force and threats to kill her, made to sub- 
mit. Only a child, not yet 16 years old; how awful, oh, how awful! In 
a few months she lost her eyesight and was stone blind. Then she was 
kicked out into the streets and told to go. She told the madam of this 
house of ill-fame that she was going to tell how she had been treated 
and that she would be prosecuted. She said, "Just tell if you want to; 
nobody will believe you when you do tell.'^ How sad, but true! She 
was found groping and feeling her way on the streets by some good, 
Christian women and sent home to her broken-hearted mother. In a 
short while she was dead and buried. Her mother returned from the 
funeral of her child and in less than one month was buried by her side — 
dead of a broken heart. The scene in the death room, just before this 
poor, blind girl passed away, was enough to melt the hardest heart that 
ever pulsated in the human breast. Between her gasps for breath she 
would say: "Where is mother? Tell mother to come to me." The weep- 
ing mother came to the bedside of her dying blind child, bent over and 
kissed her burning lips. She said: "Mother, I am dying, and I will soon 
be gone. I am going where I can see again like I used to when 
I was so young and happy. Mother, when I am gone will you think 
kindly of me? I loved William so much, and he was all this world to me, 



26 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

and I believed him true and that he would marry me as he had prom- 
ised. I was so young and knew so little, and William said that I was 
doing no wrong, for we were engaged and I loved him so." Fainter and 
weaker grew her voice, and her last words as she struggled with death 
were: '•Mother, dear mother, think kindly of me when I am dead and 
buried, for I loved him, I loved him so." She lies buried on the hill near 
the old church where she once went to Sunday school, and near 
the old country schoolhouse, among the oaks, where the night winds 
sing their mournful melody and sigh, "I loved him, I loved him so!" 
Mourn on. ye night winds, mourn on; and may they in mournful melodies 
sing to him of her whose barque he has wrecked upon the shores of time 
and that his will forever be furiously lashed upon the shores of eternal 
vengeance. 

It is for such girls as these that I plead to you to help save from such 
a fate as befell this dear girl. It is for their dear, loving mothers that 
I write and send out this little volume. May God put it into the hearts 
of the people to help me put it into every home in this land. I know 
that all true hearts go out to these innocent ones who are suffering from 
this awful, living death. I know how your heart would go out to their 
mothers in these sad, dark and desolate homes. The trouble is not a 
want of sympathy, but a lack of knowledge, and, with some, indifference, 
costly indifference. If negro slavery so aroused the people of this country. 
which was a slavery for the labor of the negro, how much more should 
this white girl slavery arouse the people, which is the darkest and blackest 
slavery ever known in this or any other land, the slavery of the brothel. 
Three hundred and fifty thousand white girls now in houses of ill-fame, 
three-fourths of whom are not there from choice; but they are the work of 
some villain or other. Half of this number were decoyed there by some 
dark plot or other, many of whom are yet children in short dresses and 
just budding into womanhood. There is nothing as cruel, as wicked, as 
merciless and as outrageous as this trapping and selling pure and innocent 
girls into such diabolical slavery; away from parents, brothers, sisters 
and friends; away from the old home and the scenes of childhood's happy 
days, and from all that is near and dear to them; away in some distant 
city, locked up in a house of ill-fame and forced to submit to the beastly 
passions of men. What awful memories, what horrors of the soul, what 
days of torture, what nights of terror! Death, how much better! 
Despair; fearful, awful, dark despair! The bleeding body may heal again, 
but what can ever heal the wound from the poison dart shot through 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 27 

this tender heart and soul? The tortures of the stake and the flames of 
fire would be tender compassion compared to the fearful tortures which 
consume these innocent girls sold into houses of prostitution. I would 
now gladly lay down my life in the cold embrace of death could I by so 
doing save the mothers, the wives, the children and the home from the 
desolation, sorrow, wreck and ruin caused by the liquor traffic and the 
traffic in pure girls. 

Less than one month ago, a young girl in company with a crowd of 
young people left one evening to attend an entertainment in a city only 
a few miles from their homes. Thousands of people were there and in 
the jam of the crowd, and in getting out of the place, this girl got sep- 
arated from those she knew. She became frightened and undertook to 
make her way to the car line. A man saw that she was in distress and 
asked her what was the matter. She told him that she was lost from her 
friends, and wanted to get a car that would take her to the depot. He 
said: "Certainly, I will show you the right car; come this way." Sus- 
pecting no danger, and anxious to not miss her train home, she walked 
along the street with him. On reaching a certain door, she was instantly 
seized by this villain, shoved into the house, into a back room, and locked 
up. She tried to make an outcry and was informed that silence was the 
price of her life. Here she was kept a prisoner for several weeks, not 
allowed out of the room. She would call to others in the house when left 
alone, but they paid no attention to her cries for help and mercy. In 
this room two men visited her daily, and she was outraged time and 
again by one who told her that he had bought her from the other, and 
that "you now belong to me." He endeavored to make her his willing 
mistress. She told him she would die first. 

In this room she found an old postal card. On this she scratched a few 
words to her distracted mother and told her that she was somewhere near 
the place where the entertainment was held, but did not know where, but 
that she was locked up in a house, and. for God's sake, to find her and take 
her out. She called to a little boy she saw passing by and asked him 
if he would mail the card. He told her he would, and she threw the card 
down to him. The mother, with the help of detectives, succeeded in 
finding her child, a girl only fifteen years old, and carried her home. 
The police are trying to find her destroyers, and, if either of them is 
wealthy, some of them will make a heroic effort not to find them. Only 
a short time ago one of these scoundrels who had led a pure girl to de- 
struction was arrested, brought before the court and fined the immense 



28 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

sum of $1 and the costs. No wonder such work goes on; no wonder girls 
are trapped and sold. Who is afraid, that is low down enough and mean 
enough? And there are plenty of this sort. A small fine and the costs for 
such a crime! The penalty should be hanging by the neck till the scoun- 
drel is dead. How long, O Lord, how long shall such ghoulish fiends be 
permitted to wreck lives and destroy homes by the thousands and thou- 
sands? How long will the people stand for these "slave traders to barter 
in the flesh and blood of innocency and purity? 

A few months ago a girl who had an ambition to be an artist went to 
New York City for the purpose of completing her education in painting. 
She knew no one in this great city of wickedness. At the same place 
where she boarded was a young man with whom she got acquainted, and, 
from his manner toward her, she believed him to be a gentleman. She 
felt lonely and homesick and she appreciated his many acts of kindness 
to her. One night he suggested that they take a walk along the streets 
and she consented to go. As they walked along, he said to her: "I have 
a very dear lady friend on this street near by, and I have been telling her 
of you and she said for me to bring you around, that she would be de- 
lighted to meet you." Suspecting nothing wrong, she said to him: "I 
would be glad to meet your friend." They went on till they came to 
a house where he told her his friend lived. They went in, and no sooner 
was this girl on the inside of the house than the door was locked and 
she a prisoner. In vain did she plead and beg for mercy, and that she be 
permitted to go. In vain did she plead with the "madam" of this house 
and was met with the answer, "I bought you, and you are not going to 
get away, and if you try it you will be killed and your body thrown 
into the river." Harlem river has been the burial place of thousands of 
innocent girls. She was taken up a long, dark stairway and locked up 
in a lonely room; forced to drink hot, poisoned liquor and smoke opium. 
In this way she was kept in a stupor, hardly knowing what she was doing 
or where she was. In this den she was forced to submit to all callers, 
for this place was one of the lowest dives in New York — Chinese, Italians 
negroes and all sorts. Reader, here you will have to imagine the horrors 
of such outrages, for my pen fails me. 

For long months no tidings of this girl had reached her parents. They 
were wild, for they feared the worst — that she had been murdered and her 
body thrown into the Harlem river. In vain did detectives search for the 
missing girl till all hope was lost. 

One Sunday afternoon, while the mother was sitting in her Western 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 29 

home, with pale face and a far-away look in her eyes, her life almost 
grieved away and broken-hearted, her husband returned from the post- 
office in a great hurry. His wife saw there was something wrong and 
asked him what was the matter. He said: "We have a letter from our 
child; she is dying in a hospital and wants us to come at once." The 
letter ran: "Dear Papa and Mama. — I am dying in a hospital. I want to 
see you once more in this world. Please come to me at once. Hester." 
They hastened to New York, and reached her bedside just before she 
went to another world — dead of a loathsome disease forced upon her 
by some Chinaman, Italian or negro. Her dying words were in part as 
I have stated and just as related. She was taken back to the old home 
and buried in the family graveyard. There lives that poor mother now 
in the greatest sorrow ever felt in the heart of a mother. God have 
mercy upon her. Oh, my beloved, is it not enough to cause us to weep 
tears of blood? If we will stand with folded hands while this is going 
on in this Christian land, will not the rocks cry out for vengeance and 
rise up as a witness against us? How can we stand before God in the 
day of judgment and answer Him ? How can we tell Him that we visited 
the sick (these soul and heart-sick girls), those in prisons (dear girls 
locked up in houses of ill-fame), fed the hungry (these starving ones pray- 
ing for freedom, companionship of mother, home and loved ones), clothed 
the naked (these dear girls, stripped of virtue, happiness, purity, home, 
mother and all that is near and dear to them) ? Will the Master say to 
us : "Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye did it unto Me" ? Or shall He 
have to tell us: "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto these, ye did it not 
unto Me"? I want you to read the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, 
from the thirty -first verse to the close of the chapter. We can not trifle 
with the Word of God today, tomorrow, or at any time. 

Last winter when the ground was covered with snow, a girl in her night 
clothing ran calling for help into the Salvation Army while they were 
holding a meeting one night on the streets, and close in pursuit of her 
was a big, burly negro, who had to be fought off by the Army officers 
to keep him from taking the girl back to a house of ill -fame from which 
she had just escaped. The captain of the Army went to this house and 
procured the girl's clothes, after threatening to have the "madam" prose- 
cuted if she did not give them up. 

This girl was trapped and sold into this house of prostitution by means 
of decoy correspondence. She stated that the "madam" told her that she 
had paid $100 in cash for her. She was a girl barely in her teens who 



30 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

lived in the country two hundred miles from the city. It was a sad 
day in that home when she said good-by to mother, brothers and sisters 
and took the train which was to carry her to destruction. On reaching 
the city she was placed in a closed carriage and taken to this house of 
ill-fame from which she escaped by letting herself down with bed sheets 
tied together. She stated that during the week she was in this house 
that she was outraged several times a day by Italians, who told her that 
if she resisted or cried out that they would kill her. 

These cases which I have mentioned are true, just as related, not 
isolated cases, but a few out of many thousands of other similar ones. 
They happen daily in some part of this country or other. Over one hun- 
dred innocent girls are decoyed, trapped, snared and sold into this awful 
slavery daily and away from some home and mother. A friend of mine 
who lives in Kentucky related to me not long since the following story 
of treachery. He said that he and his wife took an orphan child to raise, 
whose parents were both dead. That when she was old enough, she took 
a great interest in helping and nursing sick people, and soon was the 
pride of. the neighborhood among those who were sick. One day a well- 
dressed young man came to his home and said that he was on the hunt 
of girls for sick nurses for a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He offered 
this girl such flattering inducements that she begged her foster parents 
ta let her accept the position, and they agreed that she should go. On the 
day she was to leave, this young man came after her, and Mr. Lacompt 
told him that he had no reason to doubt his word, but, in order to satisfy 
his own mind, he was going to call up over the long distance telephone the 
superintendent of the hospital and have a talk with him as to the ar- 
rangements for the girl. The young man assured him that this was 
wholly unnecessary, and when he found out that he could not dissuade 
Mr. Lacompt from his purpose, he grabbed his hat and ran off in a 
pouring down rain. Mr. Lacompt did telephone, and was informed that 
they knew nothing whatever of such a man, and that they had no one 
out employing sick nurses for the hospital. It developed later that this 
same game had been worked at other places, and that several young 
girls had been sent away for hospital work and had never been heard 
of since. We owe it to ourselves, to our country, to the mothers of this 
land, to the homes in this country and to the girls of America, to stop 
this slave traffic. Look out over this land and see the efforts put forth 
to make money, to have costly and beautiful homes and fine clothing, to 
have fine churches and to send the gospel to the heathens, to get more 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 31 

and more and to have more and more. What effort is being put forth 
to save thousands and thousands of now little innocent girls from, in the 
near future, this merciless slavery? Many are engaged in the rescue 
work and in rescue missions, and I believe in this work and in rescue 
missions with my whole heart, but this is too late. The better and wiser 
thing to do is to save these girls from being trapped and sold and then 
there will be no need to rescue them. The rescue missions will have all 
they can do to rescue those who voluntarily enter houses of prostitution. 
It is the solemn duty of the church of God and of every Christian in this 
country to wipe this slave traffic from this Christian land. Only a short 
while ago at the door of a wealthy church in one of our cities, as the 
vast congregation were passing out, a poor, young girl, with a wee child 
in her arms, fell at the feet of the man who had seduced her under the 
solemn promise that he would make her his wife. With great tears roll- 
ing down her cheeks, and begging as if her heart were breaking, crying 
to him, the man she loved with her whole soul, to have mercy on her and 
her child and his child. He turned from the girl whom he had wrecked and 
ruined and from his own child and walked away. She was young, inno- 
cent and pure. He courted her and told her how dearly he loved and 
how he longed to make her his wife. Her whole heart and soul went out 
to him, and taking the advantage of her youth, inexperience and of her 
affections, he sought and accomplished her ruin and left her alone to 
bear her sorrows. Soon after her child was born she learned where he 
was and went to him, hoping that he would have mercy on her for the 
sake of his child. She found him, as stated, at this church, where he 
would not even speak to her. Thou demon of "the bottomless pit" of hell, 
you will have to go to church a good many times before you are forgiven 
and. you never will be forgiven until you right your wrong, marry this 
girl and support your child. No^ she had better not take him now, for he 
belongs to that class of criminals that should be hung as high as Hainan 
and their bodies buried in the potter's field. 

As she lay there where she had fallen, at the feet of her traducer, the 
vast throng of Christian ( ? ) men and women passed her by unnoticed, 
as the priest did the man who fell among thieves while on his way from 
Jerusalem to Jericho. But, thanks be to God, a "good Samaritan" passed 
that way, a poor widow woman, who supported her children by taking 
in washing. She lifted her up and took her and the child to her own 
humble home and eared for her until she had strength to work and sup- 
port herself and child. 



32 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

Whose chance had you rather have in the day of judgment, the poor 
washerwoman's or one of those Christians (?) who passed her by without 
even touching the hem of her garment? "Consistency, thou art a jewel," 
but you are not found in some of the "fashionable churches. " 

I do not wish to make this chapter any longer by giving these special 
cases of infamy and shame upon our civilization, a cancer upon the body 
politic, which, with its ally, the liquor traffic, is surely eating out the 
very life of this government, undermining the homes of this land and leav- 
ening the whole of society with rottenness and corruption. If black 
slavery plunged this country into the most fearful war of modern times, 
what shall be the results of this white slavery and rum slavery? Can 
we not stop long enough from our mad and wild rush of money-getting 
to take our bearings and see whither we are drifting? Are you sure now 
that a crisis is not coming in the near future which may sweep away all 
the gathering together of years in one mighty avalanche of destruction? 
This crisis is coming upon this nation. May it not be one of blood and 
fire, but may it be a cleansing, a cleaning out of rottenness and corrup- 
tion, a final and everlasting overthrow of those social and economic con- 
ditions which blast, wither and destroy everything and everybody they 
touch. He who created this land of America shall yet show the people 
of this nation that He is God and that gold is not God. He will yet 
show us that when He put the gold and silver in the earth that He did 
it for the use, benefit and happiness of mankind and not for the purpose 
of debauching them; not for the purpose of commercializing the minds, 
souls and hearts of men; not for the purpose of making men dishonest; 
not for the purpose of making some slaves and others masters; not for 
the purpose of debauching the virtue of girls and the chastity of women; 
not for the purpose of following a business which regards not man or fears 
God, the liquor business and the white slave traffic. The day of reckoning 
is at hand and woe be unto him who has stained the Lord's money with 
blood and wet it with tears. "I have heard the cry of my people and 
I will deliver them, saith the Lord." "Egyptian Thebes and Tyre by 
the margin of the sounding waves. Palmyra, central in the desert fell" 
from corruption within, not from the power of invading armies. Repub- 
lican Rome went the same way over which ancient Babylon had gone 
before. No invading army, with sword or saber, brought low this mighty 
Republic of the West, but she fell from her own internal debauchery and 
drunkenness. Such has history ever been and such will history ever be. 
Shall this government stand? Not with the debauchery and drunkenness 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMEKICAN CONTINENT. 33 

which it not only permits, but authorizes and legalizes for a price, a 
traffic which produces no product but debauchery and drunkenness and, 
worst of all, is a traffic sanctioned by a majority of the voters of this 
land, otherwise it could not exist, over four million of whom have sworn 
allegiance to Christ and His church. 

Today, dear Father in Heaven, I look up to Thee and pray Thee to 
"let this cup pass" this nation, and may we learn to live for Thee and 
set our faces and our hearts firmly and forever against the "whisky 
slavery" and the slave trade in the pure dear girls of this land. Dear 
Father, you know the heaviness of my heart now. Lift these burdens 
from off our hearts and give us days of joy for our dear mothers, our 
wives and our children. Lord, put it into the hearts of men to stop de- 
bauching our people and filling our homes with so much sorrow and 
tears, mothers' tears and the sorrow of despair. O God, help this 
people, and those who have professed Thy name to know, to put these 
great and destroying evils from them. Now, dear Lord, help me, the 
weakest and humblest of Thy servants, in Thy name, to cry out to this 
people, many of whom have entirely forgotten Thee. May they rise up 
as one man and put these great evils from them. Give us strength and 
the desire above all other desires to do Thy will, O God. Help those 
wrecked and ruined homes, destroyed by the rum traffic, and may the 
people of this nation put this traffic from them, which feeds the wild, 
flaming and lustful passions of men and destroys the virtue and honor 
of girls and women. Bless us, dear Father, and make this a pure nation 
of pure men and women, following avocations in life which build up and 
make the people happy and not those which tear down and destroy. Guide 
the people of this nation by Thy counsel and Thy wisdom to a great and 
glorious destiny, a nation of contented and happy people from the least 
to the greatest. 

Now, my beloved, a great and beautiful future lies out before us, and 
also a future of darkness and blackness. Between the two this nation 
must choose. On the one hand is purity, virtue, love, mercy, equality and 
happiness. While on the other is greed, graft, dishonest money getting, 
rum traffic, traffic in pure girls and inequality before the law. The one 
means life, the other means death to this nation. We must choose. 
Choose for God and the right, and we live; choose that which tears down 
and destroys home, honor, virtue and happiness, and we die. 

I am firmly of the opinion that a great majority of the people of this 
country are against the liquor traffic and that they want this govern- 



34 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

ment to stop the manufacture, sale, importation and exportation of al- 
cohol, except for use in the arts and for medicinal and mechanical pur- 
poses. Why leading officials and others do not come out and take a 
firm stand against alcohol, its manufacture and sale is hard to tell. Is it 
because thej are afraid of the votes and influence of the rum power? 
I fear this is one of the real reasons. The prosperity and happiness of 
the people is more important to them than the election of any man to 
office unless he stands for and comes out for those things which insure 
prosperity, and against such outrages as the liquor traffic, which all know- 
only brings destruction, wreck and ruin in every part of this land. 

I have said that this traffic would destroy this government unless it is 
prohibited, and it will not fail to do it. It is destroying it now, killing 
over one hundred thousand boys and men every year. Is not this de- 
struction? It makes more widows and orphans than the war between the 
States in the same length of time. How is this for destruction? It 
consumes more money every year and gives nothing in return than it 
took to carry on the war in any one year from 1861 to 1865. How is 
this for destruction? It causes more tears and heartaches, makes more 
desolate homes, fills more jails, asylums and penitentiaries than all other 
causes combined. It has slain more men in the last decade than have 
been slain by all the wars of the world from the battle of Waterloo to 
the present time. It has produced more poverty and caused more dis- 
tress among women and children than every other evil combined. It is 
in league with the traffic in pure, innocent and unsuspecting white girls, 
the front door of the brothel and the ground floor of the gambling hell. 
And, yet, this traffic which commits all of these outrages against society. 
is authorized and legalized for a price, the price of tears and blood, rev- 
enue for the municipality, the State and the Nation. "They have destroyed 
my people, they have huilt a city with blood money.*' 

Let the people of this country have a chance to say whether this traf- 
fic shall be perpetuated or not. Let them pass on this question divorced 
from all other questions, without bias or prejudice, and disconnected from 
party politics. The people must settle this traffic, stop it for good and for 
all, or it will settle them and destroy this government. 

I could mention hundreds of instances to illustrate this traffic in pure 
white girls, but I shall only give' one more. In the next chapter I give 
the reader the true story of Estelle Ramon, the girl of the Cumberland. 
She is yet alive, and for her sake I have not given her real name. The 
happenings as related did not take place at Mill Springs, Kentucky, but 
they did occur near the Cumberland river. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 35 



CHAPTER IV. 

A True and Sad Story of Estelle Ramon of Kentucky, the Girl of the 

Cumberland. 

In writing this sad but true story of Estelle Ramon, I shall state the 
facts and incidents as they took place in the life of this unfortunate girl. 
I say unfortunate, but on account of no wrong which she did. She was 
the victim of man's perfidy and lust. She is only one of the forty thou- 
sand of American girls who have been offered up as a sacrifice to gratify 
the wild and uncontrollable passions of men. She is just one of this 
great number who annually fall into the pits and snares laid for them. 
She is just one, a sample, of the forty thousand innocent girls who are 
yearly sold into slavery. She is one to be pitied, and not slandered. She 
was as pure as the air which she breathed in her humble home among 
the blue hills of the winding Cumberland. "She was as light of heart 
and gay of wing as Eden's garden bird." 

John and Amanda Ramon, after they were married, bought a little 
farm and settled down near the battlefield of Mill Springs. John was 
one of these great, big, good-looking, honest and hard-working men from 
the mountains. His wife, Amanda Ramon, was a refined and well-edu- 
cated Kentucky woman and a woman who loved to be with the "society" 
folks. She loved to wear fine dresses and spent more in this way than 
her husband could really afford, and this caused him to have to work very 
hard early and late. He went to clearing and improving his little farm 
and everybody was talking about what a noble fellow young John Ramon 
was and how w T ell he seemed to be getting along. His wife did not seem to 
be satisfied to live in the hills. She wanted John to sell out and move to 
Somerset. 

Two years passed away on the little farm, and Estelle Ramon was born. 
John promised Amanda when Estelle grew old enough to attend school 
that he would sell out and move to town. Years passed on and John Ra- 
mon continued to work hard, and by hard work and good management, 
he began to prosper. He built a new house and bought Estelle a piano. 
His wife still wanted to move to town, but John didn't want to go. He 
told his wife that he had nothing in town and no work there to do, that 
they were beginning to get along fairly well and the best thing for them 
to do was to let well enough alone, and that he wanted her to release 



3fi THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

him from his promise to move to town, which, by the entreaties of Es- 
telle, she reluctantly did. John was happy in his home life with his wife 
and little girl, who had now reached the age of fifteen years. She had, 
from the time she could toddle around, been constantly with her father. 
In the fields making the hay, gathering the crops, seeing after the stock, 
you would find Estelle and her father always together. After supper 
she would climb upon her father's knee and he would always tell her 
some little story to please her. She would ride the horse to the pasture 
and John would carry her back in his big, strong arms. She was essen- 
tially a papa's girl, and her father almost idolized his child. When she 
was old enough, she attended the country school close by, and was known 
as the brightest pupil in the school. She learned music from her mother, 
and it was her chief delight to sing and play in the evenings for her 
parents. She was loved by everybody in the neighborhood, young and old. 
At an early age she joined the church, and she could always be found in 
her place in the church and in the Sunday school, first as a pupil of the 
Sunday school and later on as a teacher of a class of little boys and 
girls. It was said that in after years every boy and girl in her class pro- 
fessed religion and became model Christians. 

One day a messenger was sent in haste from the schoolhouse to John 
Ramon's home to tell him to come at once, that Estelle had become 
violently ill while playing on the school playground. John Ramon 
turned as white as a cloth and came near fainting, strong man as he 
was, when this saddest of all news to him reached him. In a few moments 
he had hitched up the horses to a carriage and he and his wife were 
going as fast as the horses could take them to their child, where they 
found her in a dangerous condition. She was carried in the arms of 
her father to the carriage and driven home. As soon as John Ramon 
learned of his child's condition at the schoolhouse he had sent one of ■ 
his nearby neighbors for the doctor. In a short time the doctor reached 
the Ramon home and was by the bedside of Estelle. She had been 
stricken down with typhoid fever. John Ramon, with his life almost 
gone out of him, waited for the doctor's report from the sick room. 
When he came out he asked him what were the chances for his child to 
get well. The doctor told him that she had a severe case of typhoid 
fever, and the chances of recovery were against her, but with close at- 
tention and nursing she had a chance to get well. John Ramon said, 
"Doctor, I am willing to take that chance." Day after day and night 
after night John Ramon sat by the bedside of his child as she lingered 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 37 

between life and death. The doctor would eome and shake his head and 
say, ''She is no better. " For eight days and nights John Ramon had 
eaten scarcely anything and slept not a wink. On the evening of the 
eighth day the doctor came as usual. He told John Ramon that this 
night would determine whether his child would die or get well, that there 
would be a change before daylight for better of for worse. After giving 
John Ramon directions and telling him to wake him up if he saw any 
change in the child, the doctor laid down to get a much-needed rest and 
some sleep. The clock ticked of! the hours and no change came. The clock 
struck one, two, three. John Ramon had never, during all the long and 
weary night hours, taken his eyes off his child. There he sat in great 
trouble and sorrow, watching her. The clock struck three, and Estelle 
opened her eyes, looked at John Ramon, and said, ; Ts this you, papa'.' 
Joy filled his whole soul and being. He knew that she was better. He 
rushed into the room where the doctor was sleeping and awoke him. 
The doctor, not knowing whether the change was for the better or worse. 
hastened into the sick room and felt of Estelle' s pulse and said with 
great joy, "John Ramon, your child is better, the crisis is passed. She 
will get well." The joy of John Ramon and his wife could hardly be 
restrained. The doctor told them that they must be quiet, or they might 
excite her and make her worse. The crisis had passed and Estelle im- 
proved rapidly and was soon able to sit up and ride our with her parents. 
John and Amanda Ramon were filled with joy and a great weight seemed 
to be lifted from the whole neighborhood on account of the recovery 
of Estelle, for she was dearly loved by all who knew her. 

On an adjoining farm to John Ramon lived a neighbor by the name of 
David Scott, as true a man as ever lived among the hills of the Cumber- 
land river. David Scott had one son. William Scott, as noble a lad as 
ever lived. He was honest, true, and, like Estelle, was loved by all. 
William was just two years older than Estelle, and together they had 
played from early childhood. During Estelle's sickness no one, unless 
her parents, seemed more anxious about her than did William Scott. 
Never a day or night passed but that William Scott called at the Ramon 
home to inquire about Estelle during the whole time of her illness. 
After she got well and took her place in the church and the Sunday 
school William Scott was there too. He thought that there were none 
like her, and she thought a great deal of him. 

One day about three months after Estelle had recovered Mrs. Ramon 
said to her husband. "John, have you noticed that William Scott is show- 



38 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

iag too much attention to Estelle ? I don't like it and we must stop it 
or the first thing we know he will be coming here to pay his attentions 
to her. Another thing, I believe that Estelle thinks a good deal of him." 
"Well, suppose she does/' said John Ramon, "is not William a good boy 
and a good companion for Estelle, or anybody else?' 7 "Yes, I know that hp 
is a good boy, but, if we continue to let Estelle associate with him like 
she has been doing, the first thing we know he will be thinking of marry- 
ing her, and I would not stand for it. I could not bear the thought of 
having William Scott for a son-in-law." "I don't suppose there is any 
danger of our having to lose our Estelle any ways soon, but when she 
is old enough to marry, I would rather she would marry William Scott 
than anybody that I know of." "What! Estelle marry Bill Scott? I 
would rather see her dead and buried.'' "Well, Amanda, what objections 
can you find to William Scott?" "I have no particular objection to him, 
but he is not good enough for Estelle. I want her to marry a man w 7 ho 
knows how to take her into society. I want her to marry a professional 
gentleman, and not a greenhorn like W 7 illiam Scott." "Well, Amanda, 
I don't care so much about Estelle going into what some people please to 
call 'society,' but I want her to marry a true man who can and will 
make her life happy. I have no fault to find with William Scott. I 
know that he is thinking a good deal of Estelle., and that she thinks quite 
well of him, and if they should want to get married sometime I am not go- 
ing to interfere." "You may not interfere, but I tell you now that Estelle 
shall never marry William Scott." Estelle came in from school, and this 
ended the conversation. Estelle and William had told each other from 
childhood that when they got old enough they were going to get mar- 
ried. On Sunday before the conversation between John and Amanda 
Ramon, William Scott had reminded Estelle of their long-ago made 
agreement, and Estelle had told him that they w^ould carry out this 
agreement some day w T hen they w 7 ere older. William believed in Estelle 
Ramon, and she believed in him. Estelle one day told William that her 
father liked him, but that her mother hated him and that it would be 
best that he quit coming to her home. It was on this occasion that 
William and Estelle plighted each other their love and he told her that 
nothing but death could ever separate him from her, and that he would, 
if necessary, give his life for her. In after years they both well remem- 
bered these words. 

John Ramon continued to work hard and to prosper. One day he 
came home from town he told his wife and Estelle that rafting logs 



TELE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 39 

down the river was dangerous, and that if anything should happen to 
him he wanted to leave them a living, and, for this reason, he had his 
life insured today while in town for $5000. Heavy rains were falling 
up the Cumberland and John Ramon was working hard, he and his hired 
hands, to get the log raft ready to go down the river and carry his logs 
to Nashville when the river got high enough. 

One evening John learned that a head rise was coming down the Cum- 
berland, and he and all hands were making ready to cut the raft loose 
and carry it to the saw T mills in Nashville as he had been doing year after 
year. Late on this evening John Ramon kissed his wife and Estelle 
good-by. He lingered longer than was his custom,, and said that somehow 
he felt uneasy and just like something was going to happen. At dark 
he reached the river and at ten o'clock they heard the head rise coming. 
All hands got on the log raft and made ready to cut it loose. The raft 
was cut loose and the rise struck it and carried it out into the middle 
of the river. The rushing waters bore down so heavily on the raft that 
it broke and went to pieces in the middle of the onrushing waters. John 
Ramon became entangled among some of the logs and could not loose him- 
self. He called for help, but no help could reach him in the darkness 
of the night and the fury of the waters. He saw that he was gone. His 
voice rang out above the noise of the waters, and he cried out the last 
words he ever spoke on earth, "William, I'm gone. Promise me that 
you will take care of my child, my dear child, Estelle."- The voice of 
William Scott rang out and said, "I swear to you that I will do it." 
John Ramon went down to a watery grave. Others of the raft crew 
escaped on logs. 

I shall not undertake to describe the great sorrow in the Ramon home 
when, three days later, the body of John Ramon was found and brought 
home for burial. Who can tell the heaviness which bore down upon the 
heart of Estelle? He was buried, and w r eek after week Estelle would carry 
flowers and place them upon his grave, and she kept it clean and fresh. 

A year now ha3 passed away, and Estelle is seventeen, one of the 
most lovable and beautiful girls in Southern Kentucky. The death of 
her father had mellowed her life and softened her soul. She was a 
woman in ways, if a child in years. William Scott had watched after 
her faithfully as he had promised her father in the hour of his death. 
Mrs. Ramon yet determined more than ever that Estelle should never 
marry William Scott. She had set her heart on some professional man 
for Estelle's husband who knew how to make her a belle of society. 



40 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

She was the only counselor of her daughter, and in every way did elio 
endeavor to cause her to break with young Scott. She often pictured 
to her the grand life she might live with some educated gentleman in the 
highest society; that her beauty and training could and would make her 
admired by everybody, and that she should not throw her chances away 
upon Bill Scott. She would never allow Scott to call upon Estelle, and 
managed to keep Estelle, for the most part, out of his company. 

One day a well-dressed and handsome young man came into the Ramon 
neighborhood. He gave it out that he was an artist from Cincinnati, 
Ohio, and had come to make some sketches of the beautiful scenery along 
the Cumberland. He was polite and gentlemanly in his manners, a good 
conversationalist and entertaining. This artist, as he was thought to be, 
was introduced into the Ramon home and soon became a great favorite 
of Mrs. Ramon, and he did not fail to show every courtesy and attention to 
the fair and beautiful Estelle. This artist soon had sized up the situation 
and had found out that his success depended, not upon the girl, but upon 
her mother. He had been telling Mrs. Ramon of the beauty and the accom- 
plishments of her daughter, and how she would shine in society if ever 
given an opportunity. He did not fail to impress upon her his own 
importance and society connections. This suited Mrs. Ramon exactly, and 
she determined to marry Estelle to the artist. He declared to the mother 
his great and undying love for her daughter, and how it would be the 
delight of his life to give her the chance in the world to which her beauty 
so justly entitled her. Little by little did the mother, her child's only 
adviser, succeed in winning her over to her way of thinking. The artist 
had declared his love to Estelle herself. She hesitated, and thought of 
young Scott, whose heart she knew was breaking. Her mother persisted 
and the artist used his blandishments, and soon it was given out that 
Estelle Ramon would be married to the Cincinnati artist. When this 
reached the ears of William Scott, he was nearly prostrated by the ter- 
rible blow. He wrote Estelle a letter in which he told her of the promise 
that he had made to her dying father, and that he was going to keep 
that promise. He warned her against marrying this strange young man, 
of whom she knew nothing. Estelle when she read this letter came near 
backing down and declining to marry the artist. Her own heart told her 
that William Scott was right, but the artist and the mother persisted. For 
fear that Estelle would yet refuse to marry the artist, the wedding day 
was set for the following Sunday. Sunday came, and Estelle, as pale as 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OE THE AMERICAN" CONTINENT. 41 

death, walked out on the floor, and she and the artist were married. 
How happy was the mother: how sad were Estelle and William Scott! 

Estelle.. dear Estelle. could you only now know the awful future which 
awaits you! 

Soon the Ramon home and all the property were -old. preparatory to 
taking Estelle and her mother to the city. The $5000 of insurance money 
and the $3000 which the home and other property were soli for were 
turned over to the artist to invest in a home in the city. Mrs. Ramon 
was to visit her people for a short while and Estelle and the artist were 
to go on and make ready the home in the city. On the morning before 
Estelle left she received a note from William Scott, saying that if ever 
she needed his assistance she would get it. She and the artist took the 
train at Somerset, and Estelle Ramon was whirled away to the awful 
doom which awaited her. She was carried to Cincinnati. Ohio, where her 
husband told her that they would spend a week before looking out for 
a home. She spent this week in a lodging house in the outskirts of the 
city. At the end of this week the artist told her that they had better rest 
up another week before they began looking around. The second week 
passed away as the first, and when he tried to put her off again, she 
grew suspicious and became alarmed for the first time. She told him 
that he must get the home., or that he had to take her back to her mother. 
He went out and pretty soon came back with a telegram from, he told her. 
a friend of his in Cleveland, wanting them to visit Cleveland and procure 
a home there. Reluctantly, she went with the artist to Cleveland, where 
they were met oy some one in a closed carriage and driven to a house. 
which she soon learned was a house of ill-fame. On reaching this place 
she was carried to a room in a secluded part of the building. Her hus- 
band then informed her where she was. and that here she would have 
to remain. That he was done with her, and for her to give his regards 
to her mother if they ever met again ; that he was much obliged to her 
for the 38000 in cash, and that he wished her a good time with the 
madam. Estelle fainted, and this human devil turned on his heels. 
walked away and has never been heard of since. The madam knew how 
to treat girls who fainted, for she had seen them faint in her house 
before, and she brought Estelle back to consciousness. Who can picture 
now the horrors which rose up before Estelle? Who can describe her 
awful agony of mind and soul c It can not be done, and I must leave it 
for the imagination of the reader. In vain did Estelle besr and plead to 
be let go. Useless were her niteous moans for freedom. The madam told 



42 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

her that she had bought her and paid for her, and that she was going 
to keep her; that the best thing she could do Avas to quiet down and 
submit to her fate willingly, and was informed of what she was expected 
to do and had to do. The madam told her that she had often paid as much 
as $100 for pretty girls like her, but that she only had to pay $50 for 
her by solemnly promising that she would not let her get away. Three 
months she was confined in this prison. What days of agony! What 
nights of torture! What dreams of horror! It is indescribable and un- 
thinkable. She was caught and held and red, burning liquor forced 
down her throat, drugged and outraged. It is beyond the power of man 
to describe the darkness, the blackness, the fearfulness and the horrors 
of her life now. I shall not try to do it, for I can not. Her only hope 
was the words of William Scott. She knew that he meant every word 
he said, and would rescue her if possible. How could he find her? was the 
question she would ask herself in her awful despair. Yet she hoped 
against hope that in some way or other he would find her. 

Three months had passed away and the mother of Estelle had heard no 
tidings of her child. She was wild, she was frantic, she was mad. The 
terrible strain had been more than she could bear. She became a raving 
maniac, and in her wild and mad ravings she would call for Estelle to 
come back to her. She would talk of nothing but Estelle. Amanda 
Ramon had destroyed her own life and the life of her child by wanting her 
to marry into "society." 

Where is William Scott, the child playmate, the youthful and true 
lover of Estelle, and the one who promised to defend her ? 

William Scott had believed that the "artist" was a scoundrel the first 
time he laid eyes on him. No sooner had suspicions of foul play been 
aroused in the neighborhood than young Scott took the train for Cincin- 
nati. On reaching there he employed a detective to aid him in his search 
for Estelle. After one week of close search in every part of the city, the 
place was found where the "artist" and Estelle boarded during their 
two weeks* stay in Cincinnati. Where they went could not be learned 
from any source, so well had the "artist" covered up his tracks. He 
advertised for her in the newspapers and secured the services of detec- 
tives in several cities. He concluded after a search of two months that 
she had been killed or taken to New York City, and perhaps across the 
ocean to some foreign country. His money was by this time all gone. He 
wrote home to his father and told him to see his friends and the friends 
of Estelle and send him money with which to continue the search, for 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 43 

he intended to find her, if alive. The money was raised immediately and 
sent to William Scott. He next went to New York, where he spent day 
after day and night after night in searching for the lost girl, but, with a 
sad heart, he had to give it up, for not the remotest clew could he get. 
He resolved to go back to Cincinnati and see if he could find out anything 
more' about her in the neighborhood where she spent the two w 7 eeks. 
He learned nothing new and had almost lost all hope. One night while 
sitting in the lobby of a hotel he overheard a conversation between two 
gamblers. One of them was telling the other about being in Cleveland 
and at a certain place where he met the most beautiful girl that he 
ever saw. He went on to describe her to the other gambler, and wound 
up by telling him that she fought like a tiger, and showed him the 
scratches which he said this girl had made on his face with her finger 
nails. The description given by one of these gamblers to the other was 
that of Estelle. William Scott later said that he could hardly keep from 
killing this man then and there in the hotel. Young Scott took the 
first train for Cleveland, not daring to seek further information from 
the gambler. He was fully convinced that Estelle was in a house of 
ill-fame in that city. By this time he had learned that it would not do 
him any good to tell his troubles to the police, for some of them would 
be more likely to help the madam secrete the girl than to help him 
to get her away. On reaching Cleveland, he determined to tell no one of 
his mission or why he was there. He determined to form his own plans 
and carry them out. He felt sure that he and Estelle were now in the 
same city and the thought almost made him wild. He knew that if she 
was in a house of ill-fame that she was there against her will and that 
she was forced to remain there. He determined to play the part of a 
sport and visit every house of prostitution in the city or find her. 

The third night of his rounds he visited one of these houses and was 
admitted into the parlor. The madam came in and asked him if he 
wanted to see some of the girls. He told her that he would not object if 
she had one real pretty. She told him that the girls were all out now 
except one she called the "fighting girl from the country." He told her 
that he didn't guess that she was much of a fighter and that he didn't 
mind her fighting. He could hardly control his feelings. He paid the 
madam $5 for admission to her room and given the key and showed up. 
"What if she screams when she sees me and gives the whole thing away?" 
thought young Scott to himself. He felt sure that she was Estelle, and 
that he was going to meet her now. The door was unlocked, and he en- 



44 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

tered. She had dozed off into a sleep. He locked the door and waited 
till the hall was clear before awaking her. He turned on the light, looked 
into her face. She was Estelle! He pulled two revolvers out of his 
pockets and laid them where they would be handy and ready, for he had 
resolved to take her out of this place this night or die in the attempt. 
The light shone on her face and showed him how pale and troubled she 
looked. He could see the great sorrows of her soul written in her face 
as she lay there sleeping. He bent over her, touched her face and whis- 
pered, "It is William Scott, from Mill Springs, Kentucky, who has come 
to take you home. For your life, don't make any noise." She opened 
her eyes and saw him and knew him and fainted away from joy. He 
bathed her face and soon returning consciousness came to her. She real- 
ized .at once how necessary it was for her to keep quiet. They held a 
whispered conversation as to how to escape. He did not want to raise 
any scene, for this might lead to his arrest and defeat all his plans of 
getting away. He determined to steal her out of the house quietly and 
get away. He opened the door to see if there was any one in the hall, 
as there was no chance to escape through a window from the room. He 
went out in the hall and carefully and slowly locked the door behind 
him so as to make no noise. He then went to a window at the far end of 
the hall. It was open. He went back to the room and tied some bed 
covers and sheets together and they went out again and locked the door 
as before, went to this window and tied one end of the sheets and covers 
to a radiator and threw them out. Estelle went down and he followed. 
Almost safe at last! In the alley where they landed it was dark and 
they were soon out of sight of this building. He told her that he was 
afraid to take her to the depot in the city, so they walked on in the 
darkness till they came to the railroad. They took down this road and 
walked till they reached the next station, some miles away, reaching it 
just a few minutes before the southbound train came along. Here they 
took the train for Cincinnati and for home. Who could tell of the joy 
which Estelle now felt on being rescued from her prison house, from the 
worst slavery ever known to the world? I shall not undertake to do 
this, for such joy can only be felt, but ne^er told. At Cincinnati William 
Scott and Estelle took the train for Somerset and soon reached home. 
Great joys oftentimes have great sorrows, and such awaited Estelle. 
William had not told her about her mother on the trip home. He knew 
that she would learn it soon enough. Mrs. Ramon's people thought, per- 
haps, if Estelle could be found, that she might come to her right mind, 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 45 

but such was not to be. Soon after the marriage of Estelle and William 
Scott Mrs. Ramon died in an insane asylum. 

Estelle is only one of the forty thousand girls just as innocent as she 
was, who are annually sold into this awful slavery by means of some trap, 
decoy, pitfall, snare or other. They are not all caught the same way. 
Some are caught, like Estelle, by marriage, for the sole purpose of de- 
stroying them; others by promise of marriage; others by mock marriage; 
others by wine-rooms of saloons or by ballrooms and high wines or by 
starvation wages. Few of them are so fortunate as was Estelle in having 
some one to rescue them. Few William Scotts come to their relief. 
Most of them are crushed till there is nothing left for them to do but to 
spend their lives in slavery, die and be buried in the potter's field. 

Forty thousand girls sold every year into this awful slavery! What 
shall we do about it? What will we do? Reader, will- you not be one 
to help save just one of these girls from this slavery? Will you not 
help save just one Estelle ? If I can not touch the reader with this sad 
but true story, then I can not do it at all. Forty thousand innocent girls 
like Estelle trapped and sold into this horrible slavery last year. 
Forty thousand more will be trapped and sold this year. It is enough 
to make the heart sick and to take the breath of any true man or woman. 
Shall it continue to be thus? How long shall it continue? May a 
merciful God have mercy on us and help us save innocent white girls 
from being trapped and sold into slavery as befell Estelle Ramon. 

Dear reader, the only way I have of knowing where you stand in this 
fight for childhood, motherhood and home, is for you to write me and 
tell me. I hope that you will do this. So long as God lets me live I 
promise you that I shall stand for the homes of this country, for the 
mothers and for their children. 



46 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Remedy. 

As I have said before, the liquor traffic is in league with the white 
slave trade, the trapping and selling of innocent girls to houses of ill- 
fame or to wealthy libertines. The liquor traffic is essential to the success 
of this slave trade in white girls, for it increases the demand for girls by 
feeding the flames of passion and lust. It is a notorious fact that nearly 
all the libertines are those who drink^ and that few men who never drink 
are libertines. Those who drink only at times are, as a rule, men of 
virtue until their blood is heated up by alcohol, and then they will go 
to places and do things they would not think of doing when sober. To 
stop this trapping and selling of pure girls for immoral purposes, the 
sale of alcohol must be stopped, the saloon must be put out of business, 
for it is the great and strong ally of the traffic in girls. There should 
be enough men in this country who love home, virtue, mothers and girls 
well enough to end the saloon business and stop the liquor traffic, which 
will almost end, if not entirely, the traffic in pure girls. Only a short 
time ago a "madam"' of a house of ill-fame went to the mayor of a cer- 
tain town and told him that unless she could have or sell liquor in con- 
nection with her business she would have to quit. She was asked why, 
and she answered that men would not come to her house and spend their 
money unless they were under the influence of liquor, and she gave the 
whole thing away when she said this. Get a man all inflamed with red 
liquor, which inflames the passions abnormally, and he throws chastity 
and virtue to the winds. 

Dearly beloved, if you would save the home, the mother and the innocent 
girls from being trapped and sold for immoral purposes, you must, by 
your votes and influence, put an end to the liquor traffic and saloon busi- 
ness. If you perpetuate the open saloon in this country you will also 
perpetuate the traffic in innocent girls ; for so long as the lustful passions 
of men are wrought up by drinking liquor and their minds clouded or 
filled with only impure thoughts, the result of liquor drinking, just so 
long will bad men and women resort to all kinds of plots and schemes 
to procure girls for immoral purposes. I am now going to ask the Leg- 
islatures of the several States to pass a law giving to women a restricted 
ballot. I shall not ask that they be given the ballot generally so that 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 4? 

they can vote on all questions, for I feel sure that such a request would 
not be granted, right as I believe it is. I am going to ask the Legislature 
of each State to pass a law giving to women the right to vote on the 
liquor question, locally, State and National. Why do I ask this ? Be- 
cause the liquor traffic concerns the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters 
of this land a hundred times more than it concerns the men. It is the 
wife, the mother, the daughter, the sister and the children who suffer the 
most from this traffic, and they are the ones most affected by it. They 
are the ones who let whisky alone, but it does not let them alone. Now, 
Mr. Legislator, are you willing to vote for a law giving to women the 
right to vote only on the liquor traffic, to have a voice as to whether 
saloons shall continue to do business or not? If you will not vote for 
this law, then why not? Is it not because you are afraid the women of 
this country would put an end to the liquor traffic if they had the chance 
to do so like the men have? I ask this of the State Legislatures, voicing 
the wishes of millions of women in this country. Remember, I am 
just asking you to give the ballot to women to allow them to vote on 
this one thing only, the liquor traffic. 

I want to urge and impress this upon the minds of the people every- 
where, that they see to it that they nominate men for the Legislature who 
will work and vote for this law, giving women the right to vote on this 
one thing only. To do this you must elect pure men and leave the booze 
fighters at home. No red-nosed whisky soaker is going to vote for such a 
law, you may be sure. How any man who loves home, virtue, wife, 
mother, sisters, daughters and children could oppose such a law would be 
hard to tell. People, don't you send such a man to the Legislature, but 
let the man whom you do send stand pledged to you beforehand to vote ta 
given women the ballot on the liquor question. 

In the next place, the "age of consent" should be raised to eighteen 
years in every State in this Union. In some States the "age of consent" is 
seven, ten, twelve, fourteen and fifteen years. Just think of it! What 
does a little child seven, ten or twelve years old know^? What does she 
know that enables the brute to go free if he can come into court and 
prove that he had the consent of the child? Our laws make them chil- 
dren in every sense till they reach the age of eighteen years. In most 
of the States a boy under the age of sixteen years can not be sent to the 
penitentiary for this crime, with or without consent, and yet a grown 
man can go free by proving that he had the consent of the child seven, 
ten or twelve years old. When will men make laws which are fair to 



48 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

both men and women alike on this matter? Why do they not do it? 
Is it because that some of them are afraid they might get caught in 
their own trap? See to it, people, that the man you elect to the Legis- 
lature favors putting the "age of consent" to eighteen years. 

In the next place, the man or woman who decoys, traps or snares 
an innocent, pure and unsuspecting girl and sells her for immoral pur- 
poses by any of the schemes I have before mentioned, should be sent to 
the penitentiary for life or hung, and this should be the law when the 
case is made out to the satisfaction of an honest court and jury. 

In the next place, when a man enters a happy home and marries out 
of that home some true and confiding girl, keeps her awhile and deserts 
her without adequate cause, that man should be sent to the penitentiary 
for not a day less than ten years and the proceeds of his labor above 
his keep should be paid to the woman deserted and her child or children, 
if any, in all cases where he left her penniless and without support. 
When he is out of the penitentiary, his citizenship should never be re- 
stored to him and he should never be allowed to marry again. 

In the next place, marriage is the beginning and the foundation of the 
family and of the home, and is one of the most sacred relations in the 
world. The easy and loose divorce laws and methods now pertaining 
should be repealed and stopped. Families should not be broken up 
and children separated from parents, father or mother, by easy divorce 
methods. Many now marry who would not think of doing so did they 
not know that they could have the marriage relation severed by paying a 
lawyer fee and court costs. We should have such divorce laws as would 
put men and women on notice that when they marry that it is for good 
and for all, and that the courts will not interfere to set aside the mar- 
riage relation unless for proper and adequate cause. 

In the next place, parents should teach their children that every organ 
of their bodies is divine and created for some holy and special use; 
including the procreative or sexual organs. If parents fail to do this, 
rest assured that they will find it out, and generally from an impure 
source, from some foul-mouthed blackguard or licentious street talk. 
Children should have this knowledge at an early age and from the proper 
source. Sexual physiology should be taught in the schools of the country 
with male teachers for the boys and female teachers for the girls. Such 
knowledge at the proper time and from the proper source would go very 
far in keeping boys and girls pure. 

In the last place, but by no means the least, the double standard of 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 49 

morality which now exists should be annihilated, and there should be but 
one standard of virtue and purity for boys and girls and for men and 
women. Young men should be as pure as they would have their own 
sisters to be. If a young man would have only purity in the girl he 
marries, then she should require the same of him, and, later on, if she 
discovers that she has been deceived, her love for him will turn to ashes. 
The husband should expect and demand that the wife of his bosom be 
pure and undefiled, and he should be governed by this very same standard. 
A sin is no less a sin because it is committed by a man instead of a 
woman. If no man would marry a prostitute ? then no woman should 
marry a libertine. If mothers would have only pure girls as fit com- 
panions for their boys, then they should have none but pure young men 
as suitable companions for their girls. I would not drive some poor 
girl from my door and invite her destroyer into my parlor. But I have 
known of this being done. It is as wrong as it is dangerous. 

'When the women of this country apply the same standard of purity to 
the men as they apply to their own sex, then men will run over each other 
to adopt it. Let boys and men know that the deadly results of their im- 
moral lives shall fall upon their own heads themselves instead of upon 
women and you will have done a lasting good for the men themselves as 
well as for women. 

No house of ill-fame should be permitted to run for one day in any 
city of this land, for those who run such houses do not hesitate to lie, 
steal, or do anything else to make money. They would buy and debauch 
the purest girl of this land without a wink. These houses should be put 
out of business. In most States the law is sufficient now for this pur- 
pose. What is needed are pure men, who will enforce the law, and what 
the people should do is to elect this kind of men. We had better wake up 
now, before a cyclone strikes us, for the awakening time is coming, yea, 
now at our door. 

I write this with the full knowledge that my life may go out at any 
time, but should my life be spared and my days lengthened, may they be 
used in making this world better and happier. I once had the fool idea, 
which many people have yet, that the object and purpose of life is to make 
money, have plenty and have a good time. Peace, contentment and hap- 
piness, the greatest things of life, can not be bought with money. Life is 
measured not by what we get out of it, but by what we put into it and 
by what we really are. A true and noble character thoroughly built from 
childhood up, is the grandest structure ever erected in this world, and 



50 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

one which requires the wisest builder. The women of this country are 
its character builders and I want to help them by writing this little 
volume. If our men, many of them, would give less attention to business 
and money making, and give more attention to their wives, to their homes 
and to properly raising their children, these same men would be a thou- 
sand times better off and happier. Money is a good thing to have, if 
properly used, but it is a poor standard by which to measure life. This 
life must and will be measured by the good we do or could do in the 
home and out of it. Home, wife and children, are the centers of happiness 
to the man who has a home, and he who undertakes to find happiness, 
except as it flows out from this center, by establishing illicit relations, is 
the biggest fool in this world. There are men, many of them, if their wives 
should treat them as they treat their wives, they would leave them and 
sue them for a divorce in less than a week. Any man should do unto his 
wife as he would have her do unto him, and he is an old fool if he don't 
do it. Any man who spends his time down town at nights or at the 
club, away from his family, his wife can put him down every time as 
being in some devilment, and she will have the old gentleman down exactly 
right, and he will go home and lie to her like a dog. Sow misery in 
your family and you are sure to reap it; the day of reckoning is going 
to come, and your sins will find you out. Now, with our backs to the 
past and our faces toward the future, let us look forward to brighter 
and better days, for the hand of time points to the zenith hour of noon 
and the clock will soon strike twelve. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMEBICAN CONTINENT. 51 

CHAPTER VI. 
A Plea to Church Members and Preachers. 

I shall devote this chapter mainly in behalf of the man in the gutter,. 
or who is going in that direction, and in behalf of his wife and children. 
In the first place, I want to say that the wife and children can not help, 
as a rule, what the husband and father does, and they should not be looked 
down upon or blamed. It is the solemn duty of Christian people and 
pastors of churches, by personal work, by visiting them in the home, en- 
couraging them and letting them know that you still respect and care for 
them, to make their lives as tolerable as is possible. Such is the plain 
teaching of the Master and such is His divine injunction laid upon all 
Christian people everywhere, and one which can not be disobeyed except 
at our own peril. 

I know that society looks down upon the poor wife of the drunkard and 
sniffs its nose at her and her children, and refuses to have anything to 
do with them, but members of the church of the living God can not do 
this without getting hurt any more than they could thrust the hand into 
the fire and not get burnt. The parable of the Samaritan was given by 
the Son of Man to teach Christian people to help those who are down. 
I plead with all the earnestness of my soul for these poor, disconsolate 
and broken-hearted women and their thousand-times to be pitied children. 
It is not enough to think kindly of them with a feeling of sorrow, but 
by personal work and contact let them know that you love and respect 
them, and see to it that they do not suffer. Be good and kind to them 
and always meet them with a pleasant work of comfort and cheer. In- 
vite them out to your church and make them know that they are wanted 
there. Old Sister Precise may turn up her nose at them when they come, 
but just let her turn it up if she does. What Sister Precise needs is re- 
ligion, for she hasn't any, as sure as you are born. It may be that the 
poor woman and her children have no clothes to wear to church. If 
they haven't, it would not hurt a few of the members to provide the 
clothes, and they would feel happier and better for having done so, and 
they would be better. I have seen this mother; poor woman, God bless 
her. I have seen her pale, wan face, her sad eyes and her cheeks all 
stained with tears. I have seen her in her humble home, surrounded by 
her little, pitiful and helpless children. I have seen her children clinging 



52 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

to her, almost frightened to death, as they saw their drunken father 
coming home. I have heard her in the night dreams, and I have seen 
her wake broken-hearted. I have found her in the home of affluence and 
plenty and I have seen her later on in misery and in the direst poverty. 
What did all of this? Drink, alcohol, rum, the gin mill. Mother, mother, 
dear mother, I would lay down my life for you if it would wipe the tears 
from your eyes and take the pain from your heart and life. Children of 
such mothers, dear little lambs, if I could I would take you to my arms 
and hug you to my bosom and carry you far beyond the storm-clouds of 
life which overshadow you, and set you down in its gentle sunshine! 
I am now begging the Christians of this land for you, mother, and for 
your children. I know your sorrows and am acquainted with your griefs. 
The drunken man, the husband and the father, what can I say of him — 
what can be done for him? He is, in most instances, to be pitied rather 
than censured. A large majority of all drunkards are made before they 
reach the age of fifteen years. I don't mean that they are actually drunk- 
ards before reaching this age, but I mean that the crop has been planted, 
the habit and appetite formed. All such should be pitied rather than 
blamed. Nearly all drunkards are the victims of early appetites, circum- 
stances or bad companions. Some are the victims of ignorance in believ- 
ing that they can drink without any danger of falling or becoming drunk- 
ards. This is what they all think at first, if they think at all. Many 
young men and boys are led into the fatal habit by the influence and 
example of older men, a thing which is a great sin to do. Men of high 
standing in the business, social or political world, who drink in the 
presence of boys and young men and often invite young men to have a 
social glass with them, are dangerous to the life and general welfare of 
young manhood. A man down in the gutter never made a drunkard of 
anyone else. Social dram-drinking is the curse of this land, and one of 
its greatest curses. Children begotten by drunken fathers inherit, if 
not the appetite itself, a weak and dangerous tendency, which, if not 
watched and guarded, is sure to result in the child falling into the drink 
habit later on in life. We have to meet all these conditions as we find 
them and as they are, and we should meet them bravely and with determi- 
nation. The greatest and worst mistake ever made by a Christian people, 
or anybody else, is that when one of these unfortunate men or boys starts 
downward to give him a kick and help him on. He will soon come to 
the conclusion, and rightly, too, that no one cares for him or has any 
interest in him whatever, and down, and down he goes, and no one making 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 53 

any effort to save him, unless it be the immediate members of his family. 
The world may turn its back on such men and boys, but the church of 
Jesus Christ and Christian people have no right to do it, and when they 
do it they violate every precept and example of the Master. It was He 
who went to the mountains, lone and cold, on the dark and stormy night, 
to find the sheep that had gone astray, and when He had found it He did 
not leave it in the mountains to suffer and die, but gathered it to His 
bosom and carried it safely to the fold. "Where He leads we should 
follow." Go thou, you who profess to know His name, and do likewise. It 
is all right and proper to go to church and listen to the beautiful songs 
and the eloquent sermons, to have our names on the church roll, help pay 
the preacher and send the Gospel to the heathen. I say this is right, as 
far as it goes, but this is not all there is to religion by a great deal. 
The religion of Jesus Christ embraces the brotherhood of man as much as 
it does the divinity of Christ or the fatherhood of God, and one of its 
vital principles is that he serves God in the most acceptable way who 
serves his fellowman the best; and another is, that we obtain happiness 
in this world by making others happy. "When the Son of Man shall 
come in His kingdom and all the holy angels with Him/' and the final 
and last judgment has come, the only test that will then be required, and 
the only one that will stand, will be: Did you in yonder world, while on 
earth, administer to the needs of suffering humanity; did you feed the 
hungry, clothe the naked, administer to the sick and those in prison? 
If so, "enter thou into the joys of thy Lord"; if not, "depart from Me, 
for I never knew you." These are solemn and awful truths, which ye will 
do well to heed. Fallen humanity is sick and suffering humanity, and 
the poor drunkard is a prisoner chained down by his own appetite as 
securely as ever was a man made secure by iron bars. It is the duty of 
the church, its members and pastors, by personal work and personal 
contact, to release these prisoners. I have, many a time, seen preachers 
and church members pass by these poor unfortunate men, as the priest 
passed by the man who had fallen among the thieves as he was on his 
way to Jericho. They seemed to say to the unfortunate man: "Touch not 
the hem of my garment, for if you do I am defiled." He would soon come 
to the conclusion that he was not wanted in their society, in their com- 
pany or on the inside of their churches. His heart longs for sympathy 
and for a kind word. His greatest desire is to break the chains that 
bind him and return again to respectable life. He wants encouragement 
and he needs and must have assistance to break these chains, but "not 



54 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

a heart to pity or a hand to help." No wonder that he drinks on. If 
Christian men and women and pastors of churches will go personally to 
those who drink and ask them to quit, show to them that you feel a kind 
and friendly interest in them, that you are their friend, that you are 
ready to receive them again into your homes, nine out of every ten will 
quit, and if you will keep this interest in them up they will stay quit, 
and should they happen to fall, just help them to get up again. 

You need not hesitate to go to one of these men, for they w T ant you to 
come and they will be glad when you do come. They don't want to drink, 
they want to quit, and they want you to help them quit, and you ought 
to do it. I have talked to hundreds of these men and have yet to talk 
to the first one who did not thank me from the bottom of his heart. I 
said to a man the other day, "Jim, I have a favor to ask of you, will 
you grant it?" He said, "I don't know, what is it?" I said to him, "I 
want you to quit drinking. Will you do it?" He said to me, "You are 
the first man ever in life who came to me and asked me to quit," and 
as he spoke great tears came into his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. 
I said, "Jim, I ask you to quit for your own sake and for the sake of your 
family. Will you do it?" And, with the tears still rolling down his 
cheeks, he gave me his hand that he then and there would quit. I said, 
"Jim, you have made me a promise and I now make you one, and that is, 
I am going to help you to stay quit" — and I am going to do it. 

A young man was one day sitting on a curbstone in Fort Worth, Texas. 
He had been on a long drunk, and all his money was gone, his clothes were 
old and his hat had gone to seed. He had traces in his face of refinement. 
A good woman, as she passed by, looked at this young man, and pity 
filled her heart. She went up to him, put her hand on his shoulder, asked 
him his name and where he lived. He told her his name and that he 
lived in Kentucky. She asked him the name of his parents, and he told 
her the name of his mother and that his father was dead. She said to 
him, "Henry, come with me to my home." He tried to beg off by telling 
her that he was not fit to enter her home. She insisted that he go, and 
he at last went. She learned from him the address of his mother, and 
that he had not written her a line in three years, or since he began to 
drink and gamble. She went to the telegraph office and sent this tele- 
gram to the mother: "Your son Henry is at my house. Says that he 
has been drinking and gambling for three years. He has no money and no 
clothes." Mother's love for her boy, the sweetest, the truest and the 
holiest thing of earth! Though he goes to the very bottom in sin and 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 00 

shame, he can never get beyond the reach of his mother's love. Back 
flashed the message from Lexington, Kentucky : ;, God be praised for my 
boy! Come home. Money will be sent you by telegraph in the morning 
soon as the bank opens/' The money came the next morning and Henry 
went home to his mother, whose heart was overrun with joy in having 
restored to her arms her long lost boy. Henry is now one of the leading 
business men of Lexington, and a strict church member. It did not take 
this good Fort Worth woman ten hours to save this boy and restore him 
to his mother. Christian man or woman, you can do the same thing if 
you will. You can find the opportunity just any day you will look for it. 

One other thing., and this chapter is finished. I have said that a ma- 
jority of drunkards are made in the home or in your neighbors' homes. 
The same is true of gamblers. Card games in the home, such as high 
five, progressive euchre, which is gambling pure and simple, poker and 
so on, and the round dance, with high wines on the side, have ruined 
thousands and thousands of boys and girls, young men and young women. 
If it takes these things to get into society, you had better stay out and 
keep your children out. I have done a good many things in my life, and 
been to a good many places, but I never broke into what is known as 
'•modern society" or let it break into me. Better break into jail, for 
you could get out easier and be better off when you got out. 

I have been to watering places, health and pleasure resorts, and at 
these places there are a thousand and one temptations to allure and 
entice young people, and more especially young girls, into the meshes of 
their damnable nets. My advice to fathers and mothers is, and it is 
good advice, to keep your children away from these places, unless you 
can go with them. The trap is always set and some human vulture is 
always standing ready to spring the trigger, and thousands of innocent 
girls have been caught at these places, L'nprineipled men go there by 
the score, "seeking whom they may devour." 

I deem it unnecessary to say that all Christian men and women in 
every part of this land are bound by their church vows and by the teach- 
ings of the church of which they are members and by the teachings of 
the Bible that it is their sacred duty to stand out bravely and boldly, 
at all times and in all places, against the liquor traffic, work against it 
and vote against it. This you will do, if you are true to Christ and His 
religion. 



56 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER VII. 
To Saloon Men. 

At the beginning of this chapter I wish to say to those engaged in the 
liquor traffic that it is not my purpose to abuse you, and I shall not do 
it. Your business is a creature of the law, and the law is a creature of 
the ballot box. I haven't anything personal against any saloon man in 
the United States, but I have no use on earth for his business, for it 
will not only ruin those who buy his wares, but it will ruin him, and 
no saloon man can escape from ruin, unless he quits the business, any 
more than he can change the laws of gravity. There are not five saloon 
men out of a hundred that ever engaged in this business for ten years 
that some bad calamity did not overtake them or some member of their 
immediate families. I have noticed it for twenty years that those who 
are engaged in the saloon business and made money out of it, that some- 
thing would happen later on and sweep this money all away or make 
the money a curse to them in some way or other. There is no escape 
from it, for he who follows this business is sowing the wind and he is 
going to reap the whirlwind. I don't want to see any saloon man de- 
stroyed or hurt. I want him to quit this business of his own free will 
and accord. I want him to do this for his own sake, for the sake of 
his family and for the sake of society, many of whose members his busi- 
ness ruins and many of whose homes his avocation destroys. I want to 
see the saloon man quit his business, because it is the enemy to the homes, 
the schools and the churches of this land, his own home included. I 
want to see him quit the liquor business because it is in league with 
the brothel and the gambling hell. He may not be in league himself 
with these things, but the business is. I want to see him quit this busi- 
ness, for it is the headquarters of the worst slavery this world has ever 
known — the traffic in innocent girls — thousands of whom are lured into 
the wine-rooms of saloons and from there to houses of prostitution, and 
at so much apiece, from $25 to $100, which is paid to their captor. 

Yes, the negro was freed, and the manufacture and sale of liquor was 
legalized for revenue, which has resulted in a slavery a thousand times 
worse than negro slavery — the slavery of young, innocent white girls, 
bought and sold for immoral purposes, first being trapped in the licensed 
wine-rooms. This hint to parents should be sufficient to put them on 
their guard continually. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 57 

Yes, Mr. Saloon Man, I am opposed to your business, for it is opposed 
to my best interest and to the best interest of my family, and always 
has been, and it is opposed to the best interest of everybody else's family, 
your own included. Your business causes annually 100,000 deaths of our 
boys and men, 150,000 widows and orphans, reduces 350,000 people to 
poverty or pauperism, keeps 425,000 children at work when they should 
be in school, fills our jails and penitentiaries with criminals and asylums 
with its insane, covers this land with sorrow and tears, lamentations, 
weeping and great mourning; wives and mothers weeping for their hus- 
bands and sons "because they are not." I am opposed to it because it 
takes from the pockets of the people and from the useful pursuits of 
life annually $1,400,000 in money, which better had been burned up. 

"In every community we find men, once honored and respected, reduced 
to poverty, wretchedness and dishonor by spending their money and time 
in drinking saloons; wdves weighed down with grief, sorrow and want, 
and broken-hearted and helpless children growing up in ignorance, beg- 
gary and vice, because husbands and fathers have been drunkards. Mil- 
lions are invested in this business of making men and boys drunkards 
and in producing the desolation and ruin of women and children, which, 
if employed in agricultural, manufacturing or commercial pursuits, and 
directed by the talents and time wasted in drinking houses, would add un- 
told millions to our aggregate wealth and make as many thousands of happy 
families as are now T made miserable by the liquor traffic." The above is 
the God's truth, and every thinking man in this country knows that it 
is the truth. Why any man wants to continue in such a business is 
hard to tell. I have asked many a saloon man if he liked the business, 
and every one of them answered that he did not. I have asked them, 
"Then, why do you stay in the business?'' and the answer was, "Tor the 
money there is in it." I say to all saloon men now, that you can not 
afford to follow a business that causes the wreck and ruin to happiness, 
property and life that the saloon business does, and the best thing that 
you can do in this world for yourself and family is to get out of it and 
stay out of it. If you have money enough to run the saloon business you 
have money enough to go into something else which builds up society and 
which does not tear down and destroy society. I have been in your homes 
and I have seen your elegantly furnished apartments, your fine horses and 
carriages and well-dressed wife and children. I asked myself the ques- 
tion, "Where did you get all these fine things ?" I went out of your home 
into others, where I saw wives and children clothed in rags, living in a 



58 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

little cabin, careworn and wan, pale-faced and sad. I asked them how 
came this, and they said that their husbands had spent everything they 
had and made in your saloons, and I then knew how you got all those 
fine things. But you can not afford to take the food out of the mouths 
of women and children and the clothes from off their backs in order to 
make money in the whisky business. This you have done, this you will 
continue to do so long as you stay in this business, and you had better 
get out of it now, for in some way or other, you are going to get badly 
hurt if you stay in it. You say: "If I get out, some one else will take 
my place." Perhaps not, but if he does you will have the consolation of 
knowing that it is not you. If you will stop, sit down and carefully 
study over this matter, you will quit the whisky business, provided you 
regard your own safety and the best interest of your own family, to say 
nothing of other men and their families. 

There is one thing I know, and that is, if the church members would 
quit patronizing you that a good many of you would have to quit. I 
don't think that you are any more to blame for staying in the business 
than they are for helping you to stay; provided, they are not among those 
unfortunate ones on whom has already been fastened the drink appetite. 
As I have said before, your business is a creature of the ballot box, and 
I do not think that you are any more to blame, if as much, than the man 
with the ballot in his hand and who says by that ballot, "I favor the 
saloon business, I am for it and I want it perpetuated with all of its 
concomitant evils, its destruction and death, its wreck of homes, happi- 
ness and virtue." Those in the liquor business are going to reap what 
they sow and the man with the ballot, who makes this business possible, 
is going to have to join in this reaping. The gin mill, which has ground 
to the death its thousands and thousands, will at last grind to powder 
those who run these same mills. The storm which has beat so furiously 
upon other households and destroyed them will yet break forth more 
furiously still on your own house and destroy you and it. Your only 
safety is to flee from the liquor business, get out of it before the days 
of its coming, for come it will, as sure as you are on this earth and as 
sure as there is a God in Heaven. 

For many long years this government was almost torn asunder by ne- 
gro slavery, which engulfed it in the bloodiest war of modern times. 
During all the years of slavery they were owned, bought and sold for 
profit. It was a great evil permitted by this government when it was 
young. Three-quarters of a century passed away, and the reaping time 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 59 

came. Hundreds of thousands of our noble men, from the North and from 
the South, fell in this mighty conflict and thousands of homes were left 
desolate 'mid the tears, the weeping and wailing of wives and mothers 
and fatherless children; and we are jet reaping the results of negro 
slavery. 

For nearly forty years we have had in this country the most malignant 
slavery of ancient or modern times, created by law for revenue and profits. 
We have been reaping its awful consequences from the beginning, and yet 
we are reaping more and more. The time for the final harvest has not 
yet come, but it is coming and its day is approaching. This fearful 
national sin will be overtaken by a punishment commensurate with its 
magnitude. That day and that hour is coming, the darkest and blackest 
day this nation ever saw, yet we are sleeping on and dreaming on, seem- 
ingly in perfect ease and security, 'mid the fires that shall sweep us on 
to destruction. Rome, republican Rome, fell, not from saber and sword, 
not from the fire of musketry or the belching of cannon, not from invasion 
by a powerful and mighty army, but from her own internal corruption, 
drunkenness and rottenness. Her hundred gates have crumbled and her 
stately monuments are as silent as the dust which they were intended to 
commemorate. Such will and must be the result to this nation, unless 
it purges itself from this legalized human slavery of its boys and men, 
of its girls and women, of this destroyer of life, liberty and happiness; 
this curse to home, school and church, to childhood, manhood and woman- 
hood; w T hich kills the body and damns the soul. 

ee Mj country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty/' for thee I plead! 



60 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
A Plea to Fathers and Mothers. 

When I remember the struggles which I had in my boyhood days, I 
can not help but feel a great interest in the children of those into whose 
lives the evil day has not yet come and whose souls have not yet been 
poisoned by alcohol. I feel an interest, not in these alone, but still a 
greater interest in those young boys in whose bodies the flames of this 
awful appetite have already been kindled, not by their parents willfully, 
for they would not do such a thing for this world. I well know that 
when they give their children alcohol or their toddies that they do not 
know or realize the danger of their acts. Ignorance will not lessen the 
sufferings or assuage the poison of the arrow once sent to the heart. 

I write this warning to fathers and mothers for the sake of their 
homes and their children. If I had but one other word to say before the 
time of final dissolution, that word would be, "Don't poison and don't 
permit anyone else to poison your children with alcohol and fasten on 
them an appetite which may cause their ruin and blight all the bright 
prospects of their lives." I have not anywhere in this little volume over- 
drawn the picture. I have told you the unvarnished truth. 

I want to here mention two examples out of the hundreds which I 
personally know, to impress upon you more forcibly, if possible, the mag- 
nitude of this great danger. I do not say that all children would acquire 
this appetite, for some of them might not and would not, owing to their 
temperaments or inherited tendencies from their immediate and often- 
times more remote ancestors, but the danger is too great to take any 
risk. 

I once had a chum, a playmate, one of the brightest and best boys I 
ever knew. He was good, kind and affectionate, smart in all his books. 
In the schoolroom we sat side by side, and I loved him as Jonathan loved 
David. His parents kept brandy in their home, gave it to him and he 
went to it whenever he got ready. He told me one day that he loA'ed 
brandy better than anything that ever went to his lips. I thought nothing 
about it then, but I know now. I saw him grow up to young manhood, 
a well-educated young man, respected by everybody. He soon took to 
hard drinking and in less than five years he had killed himself, was carried 
to the graveyard and buried. His parents, who loved him so well, but 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN COXTIXEXT. 61 

not wisely, were left broken-hearted and disconsolate. He was the early 
victim of the drink appetite, which had been fastened upon him by a 
kind and loving father. I have often heard fathers say, ; *I am going to 
give my boy whisky whenever he wants it, and put it where he can get it 
whenever he gets ready. I am going to make him strong and able to re- 
sist the temptation by placing it before him." Such folly, such nonsense 
and such danger! What does your boy know about the consequences of 
such a course? What does he know about the untried sea of life over 
which he has never sailed? Better place carbolic acid where he can get it. 

Let me now give you the other example. It is about one of these very 
boys. From the time he was a small boy his father had given him his 
toddies and kept his whisky where this boy could get to it at pleasure. 
Before he was eighteen years old he had been drunk dozens of times. On 
Christmas Day he got drunk and he and some other boys concluded they 
would have a horse race down the big road. In the middle of this road 
stood a large oak tree, the road passing on each side of it. When this 
tree was reached in the race, the boy thought that his horse was going 
on one side of the tree when he went on the other. The boy struck the 
tree, fell to the ground bleeding and dying. He was carried on a stretcher 
to his home. Just before he died he regained consciousness and said to 
his mother, who stood weeping at his bedside as though her heart would 
break: "Mother, I am dying; tell father that he did it, though he loved 
me. He told me when I would be drinking that all boys had to sow their 
wild oats. Tell him, mother, not to give my little brothers whisky as 
he did me. Mother, I am dying, and when I am dead and buried and 
you go to put a stone at my grave, put on it these words : e I sowed wild 
oats, I reaped wild oats, and I stacked them beneath this mound.' " He 
was buried in the graveyard at the old church, and on his tombstone is 
his name, the date of his birth and the date of his death, and then the 
words: "I sowed wild oats, I reaped wild oats and I stacked them be- 
neath this mound." 

I can not close this chapter without again warning parents against 
such card games as high five, poker, progressive euchre, etc., and against 
the ballroom and high wines. Progressive euchre is nothing in the world 
but gambling. You had just as well play for money and let the winner 
buy his own prize or keep the money as to play for the prize itself. It 
creates the desire to gamble, to bet and wim and thousands of young men 
have been made gamblers by these so-called social games, just as other 



62 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

thousands of drunkards have been made by social drinking. Yes, it is 
progressive, but it progresses downward and never upward. 

Thousands of as pure girls as God ever made, or ever blessed a home, 
have gone to their ruin from the ballroom and the round dance. I am not 
guessing at this, I know it. One night in a city in which I am well ac- 
quainted there was a ball where high wines were served to those who 
engaged in the whirl of the giddy waltz and to others. This ball was 
attended by a young girl, eighteen years old, who had just returned from 
college. She took part in the dance, and was prevailed upon to put the 
wine cup to her lips. By midnight she was drunk. A vulture in the 
shape of a man slipped her out of that ballroom into the wine-room of a 
saloon, and long after midnight, when the streets were deserted, she 
was taken from that wine-room, put into a closed carriage and driven to 
a house of prostitution, where she was found two weeks later by her 
own father, ruined forever. He tried to prevail upon her to return home 
and to her mother, but she refused, saying that she could never face 
the world again, and in less than six months this mother died of a broken 
heart. 

A good, honest man, who lived in a small Pennsylvania village, was 
elected to Congress. He had a wife and two children, a boy eighteen years 
old and a girl sixteen years old, and his home was happy. He and his 
wife wanted to put their children in "society," and, being wealthy, he 
rented and furnished a home in the "fashionable" part of Washington 
City. It was not long before this boy and his beautiful young sister 
had broken into "society." Card parties, suppers, round dances and high 
wines at them all. In less than a year this boy was a drunkard and a 
gambler. One night a pistol shot rang out in that home, his mother 
rushed to his room and her boy w T as lying on the floor dead, with a bullet 
hole in his head, put there by his own hand. She determined to take 
her daughter back to the old home before she, too, was ruined. The girl 
did not w r ant to go, but the mother took her anyway. In less than one 
month after the mother reached her old home in the Pennsylvania village, 
this girl, her last and only child, hung herself. A post-mortem examina- 
tion revealed the awful truth that her daughter had been ruined. 

Your children need and require pleasure and amusement, but there 
are plenty of innocent pleasures and amusements in which they can engage 
without being subjected to the dangers of what is known as "modern 
society." There are plenty of these vultures in the shape of human 
beings ready to destroy your home at the first opportunity, which they are 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 63 

ready to make if given a chance. You should never permit any young 
man into your home and into your parlor for the purpose of "courting" 
your daughter unless you are willing to make him your son-in-law. 

A few words to married men and I close this chapter. If you want 
to be happy in your homes, you make your wife and children happy. If 
you want to be miserable, just make them miserable. You owe it to your 
wife and to your marriage vows to be as true to your wife as you would 
have her be to you, and you can not break these vows with impunity. If 
you do, your own happiness will be destroyed, whether your own wife 
ever finds it out or not. Another thing, you can not afford to neglect 
your family for business. If either must be neglected, let it be your 
business. Some men, on account of their rush to make money, get home 
so late at night and leave so early in the morning that their own children 
hardly know them. Any man is in a bad fix who has been swept into the 
wild and mad rush of the present-day commercialism. Such men lose 
sight of their families and everything else that is good. 

Commercialism, dangerous as it is, is not to be compared to the dangers 
of libertinism. It breaks all bounds, knows no restraints, throws the 
marriage vows to the winds, only soon to be consumed in its own caul- 
dron of sin. It seeks its prey at all times and everywhere. It employs 
all manner of devices, chicanery and stratagem, and it makes its strongest 
card social standing and wealth. Of the forty thousand innocent girls 
annually trapped, bought and sold into this sensual, devilish and hellish 
slavery, many of them are the victims of wealthy libertines. 

May the disclosures of this chapter put parents on the watchtower for 
the safety of their children, and God grant that they heed the counsel 
and take the advice herein given, and may He protect our innocent boys 
and girls from all harm. 



64 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER IX. 
To Boys and Young Men. 

It is my purpose in this chapter to briefly call attention to a few things 
which, if begun and persisted in, will spoil the life and ruin any boy 
or young man in this country. I shall not only point out some of life's 
great dangers, but shall also point out the way over its sea which is free 
from sandbars and rocks and on which no mariner has ever yet been 
wrecked. That clouds will gather and storms will come is certain, but 
I now shall trim the lamps and light up the lighthouse to safely guide 
your vessel to port, safe from the winds and storms. The safety of this 
country in the years to come depends on the boys and on the young men 
of today. As they are, so this country is going to be. Into their keep- 
ing must be given the future destiny of this nation, its life, civilization 
and religion, the prosperity and happiness of unborn generations and of 
the present generation. What the next generation is to be, will largely 
be determined by what this generation is now, a result largely made up 
from the individual lives of the boys and young men of today; and in 
this summing up, every life must be counted, either for good or for evil, 
for weal or for woe. 

The most dangerous thing to boyhood and to young manhood is the 
liquor appetite and the liquor habit, generally formed in our boys by 
their parents and in our young men by social drinking. This appetite 
and habit have put out thousands of our brightest lights, and has caused 
to set forever many of our brightest stars. The drink habit will ruin any 
man or boy regardless of friends, wealth or social standing, if persisted in. 
It dwarfs the intellectual faculties, blunts the moral perceptions, paralyzes 
the nerves and brain, destroys the physical forces and unfits its victim 
for every honorable pursuit in life. To escape from its blighting and 
withering effects there is but one path of safety. All other ways have 
failed and forever will fail. They may lead you on for a short while by 
what you think are sweet-scented roses and lilies of the valley, only too 
soon to discover that your path is beset with thorns and brambles at 
every step of the way. This way, this safe way, this only safe way, is 
never, never, never to put the glass to your lips. The most dangerous, 
fearful and awful hour that ever came into the life of the boy or young 
man is that dark, black hour when he lifts the glass to his lips for the 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 65 

first time. It is enough to make the angels in heaven weep, could they 
foresee the coming consequences of that hour, and cause the blood to 
congeal in the veins of mortal beings. 

The first drink — here is where all the danger lies. Young man, I am 
your friend, wherever you are and whoever you may be, and by all that 
is sacred and near and dear to you, by the worth of your own life in this 
world and in the world to come, let me ask you, "So long as the heart 
hath passions, so long as the life hath woes,'" never raise the fatal glass 
to your lips. May God help you never to do it! 

Another dangerous thing to young life is reading bad books and other 
bad literature, such as thrilling detective stories of daring adventure, 
narrow escapes and capture, stories of dark crimes, robbing banks and 
express cars and of midnight assassins, robbery and escape, tales of illicit 
love, obscene books and pictures. I say these things are dangerous and 
young people should never read such literature, and they can not do it 
without getting hurt. Thousands of boys and men have gone to the peni- 
tentiary, and some even to the gallows, as a result of reading some bad 
book or other. Many a dark crime has had its inspiration in reading 
bad books, like the "Lives of the James Boys," "Younger Brothers," "The 
Wild West," "Wild Bill," "Buffalo Bill," and their like. Any bad book is 
poisonous, both to life and character, and should be kept out of the home, 
and shunned by young people as they would shun the poisonous viper. 
Life and character are determined by what they feed upon and are built 
out of the very materials which they daily use. Good books, like good 
company, are healthy and invigorating to the moral nature. Keep good 
company and read only good books, including that book of all books, the 
Bible; let liquor alone, be truthful, be honest, be energetic, and you are 
safe and your life will be a success, full of peace and happiness. You 
must treat every man's sister just like you would have him treat your 
own sister. Don't desecrate the Sabbath day. You can not afford to do it, 
and you can't without getting much the worst of it. 

I want to forcibly remind you of another thing: Don't let the main 
purpose of your life be to make money, but let the real aim of your life be 
to do all the good you can in this world. That man who uses up his 
life in gathering together wealth and profits will find in the end that he 
has wasted his life. It is not what you get out of life which will bless 
you and bless the world, but it is what you put into it. Every dollar 
rightly used is a blessing, and every dollar wrongly used is a curse. True 
character, an educated head, hand and heart, is a far better legacy to 



66 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

leave to you than money. The money spent in sin and in gratifying sin- 
ful appetites and passions is many times worse than wasted, to say noth- 
ing of the injuries done. Make all the money you can honestly, but be 
sure to use it in the right way. 

I would remind you of another thing, of that restless disposition among 
boys and young men to leave the home and the farm to go to the city and 
take up city life and city ways. There are many good people in cities and 
there are many other things there which are not so good. Don't you get it 
into your head that you can dp better in the city than you can at home 
with your parents, for you can't do it, and it is dangerous to try it. Many 
a boy has gone to his ruin and he started the very day when he left the old 
home to go to the city. Mother's apron strings are a mighty good thing 
to be tied to, and don't you get in any hurry to cut loose, for she is the 
best friend that you will ever have. I know that parents are often to 
blame for their boys leaving home. The way to keep them at home is to 
make home the most pleasant and attractive place on earth. Mother, 
give your boy one of the best rooms in the house, fix it up for him and 
make it cozy and nice. Provide innocent pleasures and amusements for 
your children and write the young people to come to help enjoy them. 
Make home a veritable playground, rip, romp and play — all so necessary 
to the proper development of childlife into innocent and strong young 
manhood and young womanhood. But when you think that you can make 
a work ox out of your boy, kick and cuff him around just any old way and 
put him in just any old place, the very first thing you know he will be 
gone and you are to blame for it. You have simply reaped what you 
sowed. 

I am going to hope that this short chapter will prove a great blessing 
to our boys and young men, and it can not fail to do it, if they will only 
heed the good and friendly advice herein contained. 

I close this chapter with the following sad stanzas, the prayer of many 
a broken-hearted mother: 

Where is my wandering boy tonight — 

The boy of my tenderest care, 
The boy that was once my joy and light, 

The child of my love and prayer? 

Where is my wandering boy tonight? 

Where is my wandering boy tonight? 
Wherever he goes, I love him he knows, 
0, where is my boy tonight? 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OE THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 67 

Once he was pure as the morning dew, 

As he knelt at his mother's knee; 
No face was so bright, no heart more true, 

And none so sweet as he. 

O, could I see you now, my boy, 

As fair as in olden time, 
When prattle and smile made home a joy, 

And life was a merry chime. 

Go for my wandering boy tonight, 

Go, search for him where you will ; 
But bring him to me with all his blight, 

And tell him I love him still. 



68 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER X. 
To Girls and Young Women. 

What I shall say to you in this chapter will be in the way of sound, 
fatherly advice and warning. What I said in the previous chapter con- 
cerning bad books and other bad literature applies to girls and young 
women the same as to boys and young men, and which I shall not repeat 
here. Girls, however, who read this character of literature, as a rule, 
read a different kind to what boys read. In other words, girls like to 
read these wild stories of adventure, provided they have a love affair 
mixed up with them. Such stories, without the love affair, may be read 
by boys, but by girls hardly ever. Fiction forms a very essential and a 
very important part of our literature. Some of the best, the strongest 
and most inspiring lessons and morals of life are taught in fiction. But 
there is fiction which helps and there is fiction which hurts and may 
destroy; light, trashy, intended to be read not for any moral or informa- 
tion it contains, not to enlighten the mind of the reader or elevate the 
moral or spiritual nature, but to interest, to thrill and to excite by a 
tale, the like of which never took place and never will, or if its like has 
taken place it would be better forgotten than told in a book. The authors 
of our best and readable fiction are well known, but the "yellow-back" 
kind should be severely let alone and left unread. It plays on the lower 
faculties and destroys the taste for solid reading and does much harm in 
every way. To get in the way of reading trashy novels is very dangerous, 
indeed. I have seen girls who had acquired this habit to such an extent 
that they would sit and read one of these novels after another from day 
to day and often till after midnight. Other books had no interest for 
them in the world. Read all the good books you have time to read, but 
let trashy novels alone, for there is no good in them, but much harm. 

What I have heretofore said about the ballroom, the round dance, pro- 
gressive euchre and such like, I wish to adopt here and make a part of 
this chapter without repeating it. I am going to hope that you will 
read, carefully study and ponder over these things and that I have done 
you a lasting favor by writing this little volume. 

That girls will have sweethearts goes without saying, and this is right 
and proper, provided they will consent to wait till they get grown and 
wise enough to choose rightly and to understand what marrying means, 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 69 

together with its trials and responsibilities. Girls not yet old enough to 
drop their dresses should devote their time to their books and in assist- 
ing their mothers and not to the boys. I suppose that most girls have 
the sixteen-year-old fever, but just be patient and wait and you will get 
over it, for it is not fatal, only to those who try the antidote of getting 
married. All you have to do is to go to school, study your books, play 
with your dolls and help your mothers. Thinking about marrying? Oh, 
no; not yet. When you get old enough to think right w T ill be time enough. 
There is a little, gentle and harmless looking animal that I want 
to warn you against. It is called a dude. He won't work if he can help it, 
wears fine clothes, has soft skin and white hands, loves to talk and laugh 
and impress you with his importance, smokes cigarettes, drinks red liquor 
and perfumes his breath with spices and his clothes with German cologne, 
parts his hair in the middle (Sam Jones says he does this because there 
is not room enough to part it on the side ) , and is a general all-around high- 
roller. Just let this little animal alone, and if it comes about you, lead 
it out to the front gate and show it the road once for all. I have seen 
girls, and especially young girls, get smitten with one of these little 
creatures. I have a girl in mind now, a beautiful girl, just blooming 
into womanhood. She had two sweethearts. One of them was one of these 
little animals, the other an honest, sober, plain, hard-working young man, 
who loved her dearly and who would have made her a good, honest living. 
But the dude could outdress him and outtalk him and give him ten in 
the game. "Dog my cats," if that fool girl didn't jilt that hard-working 
young man and marry that dude, and actually ruined her own life and 
the life of him who really loved her and would have made her happy. 
It is better for any girl to marry a man instead of a bundle of shams 
"diked up" in fine clothes. Never marry a man just to get a home. That 
time is past in this country. Prepare yourself for life so you can make 
your own way in the world if necessary. Never marry any man just 
because he has money, and never give your hand unless your heart goes 
with it. You owe this to yourself and to the man you marry, otherwise 
"there will be trouble in the camp." Marry no man unless he is worthy 
of you. No woman can live happily with any man w r hom she knows or 
thinks to be beneath her. A woman may stand for a husband to look up 
to her, but she will despise him for doing it. Marry a man to reform 
him? Not till two black Sundays come together, and not then. Do it, 
and you will be the one who will get reformed or transformed or some- 
thing worse. You will reform him first and then marry him, will you? 



70 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

Maybe you will, but if he reforms just to get you, he won't stay reformed 
afterwards. He will say: "I have got you now, and I'll do just as I 
please," and he will do it. Better marry a man who don't need any reform- 
ing. Not everyone by a good many who comes and pours into your ears 
their sweet tales of love mean a word they say. They are lying to you 
like a cur dog, and they know it. You can always tell their kind and the 
first one of these curs who insults you by making an indecent proposal to 
you, drive him from your door forever; tell your mother that she may 
tell your father, or tell him yourself, so that he can beat some of the 
dog out of him. I told you that I was going to give you some good, 
friendly, fatherly advice, and I am doing it, and it's sound as a rock and 
I want you not to fail to take it all. I don't care who you are or where 
you live, I am your friend, and want to help you to the best things which 
are in life for you. I don't want to see your life hurt or spoiled or your 
happiness destroyed, and it is not going to be done if I can help it. Your 
virtue is the brightest crown that ever bedecked the head of womanhood, 
brighter and far more precious than ever crowned the head of a queen in 
any royal household of kingdoms or empires. Lose this, and all is lost 
forever; the brightest day becomes the blackest night, the long, dark 
night whose sun is set to rise no more. Better had you never been born. 
Better had your destroyer torn you limb from limb, and better for him 
had a millstone been tied to his neck and he cast into the middle of the 
sea. If vengeance failed to overtake him the very rocks would cry out. 
As he listens to the mournful dirge of the night winds, he shall hear 
the gathering of the coming storm as it lashes the waves into the white 
foam, 'mid lightning's flash and thunder's roar, which shall drive his 
barque forever upon the eternal shores of vengeance. 

There are four things exceedingly dangerous to the life and happiness 
of our girls and young women, which I desire to mention. These things 
are promises of marriage falsely made, mock marriages, decoy advertise- 
ments and starvation wages. 

You can avoid the dangers of the first two by following the advice 
already given. One other additional thing I will mention. Have little 
to do with strange young men of whom you know nothing. Treat them 
civilly, but no more. I have seen these young men arrive in a town or 
community and they would not be there a week until they would begin 
to try to "make a mash" on some girl or other, and. strange to say, I 
have seen girls encourage them. These young men may be married for 
all you know, and they often are, and pass themselves ofT as single to 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 71 

"have a time" at your expense, then get away and tell what a fool they 
made of you and laugh about it. A nice strange young man, who thinks 
well of himself and of your sex, is not going to push himself forward and 
get "fresh" as soon as he hits a town or community. When he does, 
have nothing to do with him whatever, for he means no good. One of 
these fellows said: "I am just seeing how many scalps I can hang to 
my belt." 

You should learn those natural laws which regulate and govern your 
sex, for such laws have much to do with your health and happiness 
throughout your whole life. If these laws are violated, the penalty is sure 
to follow, and ignorance of them will not mitigate this penalty one whit. 
Let your manner of dress be not for beauty alone, but for beauty and 
health. 

I hope this chapter may be of great benefit to each one and all of you, 
and it can not fail to be if you will study and follow it. Now, may hap- 
piness and prosperity attend you all the days of your lives, and may the 
pleasures of imagination fill and sweeten your dreams. May you have 
one perpetual round of sunshine and gladness until the setting of life's 
sun behind the western hills, and may it go down in one grand, resplendent 
halo of glory. Then may the eternal morn burst in upon your freed spirit 
in the Paradise of God, " where the wicked cease from troubling and the 
weary are at rest." Adieu, but I hope not forever. 

Why should we mourn departing friends, 

Or shake at death's alarm; 
'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends 

To call us to His arms. 



72 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Legalized Liquor Traffic. 

I have said in former chapters of this little volume that the legalized 
liquor traffic is the My of the traffic in pure girls, the ally of the white 
girl slavery. I want to repeat again that the saloon, the wine-room, the 
legalized liquor traffic, is the piston rod, the steamchest, the powerhouse 
of this slave traffic in American white girls. It is the coupling pin which 
holds this traffic together, without which it must fall to pieces. The 
saloon is the highway to the house of prostitution, the dark way and 
the night way. It is the mill that grinds out libertines and the feed 
trough where passions flourish and fatten. The saloon is false, foul and 
filthy, the friend of the harlot and the enemy of the home, the breeder 
of vice and the destroyer of virtue. It is vicious, vile and villainous; the 
destroyer of public health, public morals and public decency. It is the 
gateway to the gambling hell and the front door to houses of prostitution. 
It puts to silence some ministers in the pulpit and dictates to some 
editors on the tripod what they shall publish and what they shall not 
publish about the decoys, traps, nets, snares, plots and pitfalls used by 
the trappers and the traders, and that their diabolical and damnable deeds 
may be hidden from the public. It lays its hand on the Associated Press 
and commands it not to say anything about what the Purity Congress did 
in Battle Creek, Michigan, in exposing the plots, snares, traps and pitfalls 
used by the trappers and traders, and less than ten lines of the proceedings 
of this Congress, which proceedings should have made columns in the news- 
papers, were sent out by this Associated Press. Had there been a prize fight 
at Battle Creek, this would have been reported by rounds. But the trap- 
ping and selling forty thousand pure, innocent girls into the slavery of 
the brothel is too insignificant for the Associated Press to pay any at- 
tention to. The liquor traffic is the slimy snake that coils itself around 
its victim and squeezes out of him everything that is noble and manly, ' 
bites like the serpent it is and stings like an adder. It respects no law, 
regards no man and worships no god but Mammon. It ruins the char- 
acter of men, encourages vice, makes criminals, crowds prisons, fills poor- 
houses, blights the purity of men, blasts the virtue of women, poisons 
the brain, paralyzes the nerves, debauches humanity, fills premature 
graves and damns the soul. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 73 

The saloon is the headquarters of the trappers and the traders; the 
incubator of vice, crime and misery; the cesspool of debauchery, im- 
morality and corruption. It burns the tongue, blights the body, blears 
the eye, bloats the face, poisons the blood, drains the pocket, bankrupts 
men, destroys women, and starves children. It deadens the conscience, 
destroys the will, degrades the morals, diseases the body, darkens the 
judgment, dethrones reason, blights the expectations, buries hopes, fills 
the land with misery and death and hell with the souls of the lost. It 
is a social, physical, financial and a moral curse, and lays its slimy 
fingers on every man, on every home and on every business in the land. 
It is the friend of the gambling den and the brothel, and the enemy of the 
home, the school and the church. The saloon is the house of refuge, the 
ally of the traffic in pure, innocent and unsuspecting white girls, by which 
over forty thousand young girls, as pure as the morning dewdrops, are 
annually trapped and sold for immoral purposes. They give nothing for 
the millions of dollars which they take from their patrons, except wreck 
and ruin, devastation and destruction. They are the product of the 
law and the law is the product of the American voter with the ballot in 
his hand, which ballot he stains with innocent blood and blisters with 
the tears of women and children when he casts this ballot to perpetuate 
this, the greatest of all curses, the liquor traffic. 

The great danger to this government is not because men sell alcohol 
and men drink alcohol, not the liquor traffic per se, but because the 
government legalizes, authorizes and protects this traffic by law, thereby 
putting its stamp of approval upon all the work of destruction resulting 
from this same legalized liquor traffic. The State and National govern- 
ments sell permits at so much a permit, which enable men, without any 
fear of molestation, to engage in a traffic which has made an army of six 
hundred thousand drunkards in this country; which annually kills over 
one hundred thousand men and boys; which has slain since the Civil 
War twenty-five hundred thousand of our citizens; which annually makes 
over one hundred and fifty thousand widows and orphans; which yearly 
reduces over three hundred and fifty thousand men, Avomen and children 
to poverty or pauperism; which fills our jails and penitentiaries with 
its criminals and our asylums with its insane; which forces thousands 
and thousands of little boys and girls to work in factories, mines, pack- 
ing houses, sweatshops and in other immoral and unhealthy places for 
a little something to eat and wear, on account of drinking fathers, when 
these children should be in school; which covers the land with broken- 



74 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

hearted wives, mothers, sisters and daughters and fills many once happy 
homes with mourning and tears, on account of drinking husbands, sons, 
brothers and fathers; which takes from the useful pursuits of life ten 
times more money than the government gets back in revenue, to say noth- 
ing of what society suffers on account of the crimes it causes to be com- 
mitted. 

The revenue derived from the legalized liquor traffic is the price of 
men's blood and women's tears. Governments, like individuals, must 
reap what they sow, and when this government sows destruction to its 
citizens, among whom are over forty thousand innocent girls annually 
destroyed, by means of this same legalized liquor traffic, then this gov- 
ernment must reap destruction. This government w r as founded to protect 
the life, liberty and happiness of the people. The legalized liquor traffic 
destroys life, liberty and happiness. Can a house divided against itself 
stand? Yes, this government will stand, but the liquor traffic is doomed, 
and with it the trappers and the traders in white girl slavery. 

We are told that we can not legislate morality into men. What is the 
law for, anyway? It is to protect society and punish evil doers. Why have 
a law against murder and stealing? To protect life and property. Why 
should we have a law against making and selling liquor? To protect 
life and property. No, it was never intended to legislate morality into 
men, but to restrain them from injuring society and to prevent them 
from destroying the life or taking the property of the people without 
giving value received for it. 

A preacher recently said from his pulpit in a wide-open saloon town, 
that no man, set of men or any government had any right to tell him 
what he should eat or drink. This has been quoted all over this country 
by the papers in league with the liquor traffic as the one unanswerable 
argument, coming from a minister of the Gospel, in favor of saloons. 
No cue w r ants to tell this preacher, or anyone else, what he shall eat or 
drink. If he wants to eat spoiled meat, just let him eat it. If he wants, 
to eat poison food, let him eat it. If he wants to eat cocaine or opium, 
let him eat it. If he wants to eat impure or poison food, let him go to it. 
But the day that you sell him poison food he will have you arrested for 
violating the "pure food law." The question is not what I shall eat or 
drink. The question is what I have the right to sell my neighbors for 
them and their children to eat or drink. You are not allowed to sell un- 
healthy, impure or poison food. In the name of God. then, I ask why 
men are allowed to sell poison drink, which poisons both soul and body. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 75 

Alcohol in all of its forms is a poison, as everybody knows that has sense 
enough to get in out of the rain. Every schoolboy and schoolgirl who 
ever studied the common school physiologies knows this. Every physician 
in the land says so. It is against the law to sell poison food anywhere in 
this country, and it should equally be against the law to sell poison drink. 

But some one says: "I am one who believes in personal liberty." Per- 
sonal liberty to do what ? To vote for the saloon that destroys life and 
liberty, peace and happiness, men, women and children, and which has 
not one good thing to recommend it? Is this the kind of personal liberty 
you want? Your personal liberty ends when it comes in conflict with the 
public good. You have the right to do just what you please till what you 
do injures your neighbors or hurts society, and right there your personal 
rights must come to an end. This is the bedrock principle of all well- 
organized society. Some of the blackest and most damnable crimes ever 
committed were committed in the name of personal liberty. 

It is sometimes said that it is undemocratic to vote for prohibition and 
against the legalized liquor traffic. Is the Democratic party a whisky- 
soaked party? If so, you had better not tell this where it can get out. 
Was not the immortal John H. Reagan a good Democrat? Reagan said: 
"In every community we find men, once honored and respected, reduced to 
poverty, wretchedness and dishonor by spending their money and time in 
drinking saloons; wives weighed down with grief, sorrow and want, and 
broken-hearted and helpless children growing up in ignorance, beggary 
and vice, because husbands and fathers have been drunkards. Millions 
of dollars are invested in this business of making men and boys drunk- 
ards and in producing desolation and ruin of women and children, which, 
if employed in agriculture, manufacturing and commercial pursuits, and 
directed by the talents and the time wasted in drinking saloons, would 
add untold millions to our aggregate wealth, and make as many thou- 
sands of happy families as are now made miserable by the liquor traffic." 
This is what the great Southern Commoner said. 

Is Governor Folk of Missouri a good Democrat ? Here is what he said in 
a message to the Missouri Legislature: "The State of Missouri is wealthy 
enough to support its institutions without making them owe their exist- 
ence to licensing a business that degrades the youth and pollutes the 
morals of men. It is wrong to support the State government by putting 
a price on vice and it is wrong to license the liquor traffic at all. If it 
be insisted that men will drink and sell liquor any way, and that the 
State may as well profit by their appetite and lust for gain, it could 



76 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

with equal force be urged that men will kill, and, therefore, the State 
of Missouri should in certain forms and in certain places license murder 
so as to profit by this weakness of mankind." What Governor Folk said 
about licensing the liquor traffic in Missouri equally applies to Texas 
and to every other State and to the National government. 

Was not Thomas Jefferson a good Democrat? Are not some of you 
walking in his political footprints? Do you not know that Thomas Jef- 
ferson was bitterly opposed to the legalized liquor traffic? This traffic 
was first legalized by Congress while Washington was President of the 
United States, to help pay the debt of seventy million dollars caused by 
the war between the Colonies and England. This law Thomas Jefferson 
had repealed, and the legalized liquor traffic was no more from the time 
when Jefferson was President until 1863, when this traffic was again 
legalized by Congress to help pay the enormous debt caused by the Civil 
War. Never was a day in the life of Thomas Jefferson when he did not 
bitterly oppose the legalized liquor traffic. Lincoln himself was opposed 
to the legalized liquor traffic, and this traffic would not have been legalized 
while he w T as President except as a war measure. 

The liquor traffic is a National evil and must have a National remedy. 
We can never save this country by saving it in spots. There is but one 
lasting and final solution of the liquor question, and that is an amendment 
to the National Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale, exporta- 
tion and importation of alcoholic liquors anywhere in our National do- 
main, except for mechanical, medicinal and scientific purposes and for 
use in the arts. Let Congress submit this amendment to the people of 
the several States for their ratification or rejection, and at a time when 
there is no other question before the people, and let them pass upon this 
amendment free from all bias or prejudice and independent of their polit- 
ical affiliations, and with the amendment wholly divorced from party 
politics. This is the method by which the liquor traffic question w^ll be 
finally and everlastingly settled in the United States, and in this way, 
and in no other way, the final settlement of this problem must come. 
Local option and State-wide prohibition are now making rapid strides 
toward National prohibition, and I want to live to see the day when the 
saloon curse and the liquor traffic will forever be routed from the face 
of our great and common country. May God speed the coming of this, 
the greatest of all days in our whole history. Then civic righteousness 
will cover this land "as waters cover the sea." Sweet, beautiful, glorious 
and happy day this will be when the armies of the Lord, clothed and 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 77 

united in battle array shall go forth with a tread that will make the 
cohorts of wickedness shake and tremble; with the snow-white ballot in 
one hand and the badge of honor, love and civic righteousness in the other 
hand, "fighting for the green graves of their sires, fighting for their altars 
and their fires, for God and their native land." Then the forces of King 
Alcohol shall be routed fore and aft, root and branch, in the front and 
in the rear, and the protocol of peace shall be written in the Constitution 
of this Republic, which shall declare that King Alcohol has lost his king- 
dom forever. In this battle I am determined to have a part and in the 
glory of victory I want to live to rejoice. I only ask a place in the 
ranks that I may be in the front and in the thickest of the fight, and if 1 
go down, let me go, but let there not survive one messenger of defeat. 
This government must go out of the whisky business, or it must go out 
of the government business. 

The conflict is on. Men and women are marshaling from the North, 
South, East and West as never before. Which side are you on? Do 
you favor or oppose the diabolical deeds, the dark plots, schemes, traps 
and pitfalls of the trappers and the traders of which I have already 
told you? If you oppose this traffic in pure, innocent girls, then you 
must also oppose its ally, the liquor traffic. You can not consistently 
oppose the one and favor the other, no more than you can consistently 
oppose murder and favor the murderer, or oppose crime and favor the 
criminal, or stand for the home and favor its destroyer, or talk for God 
and work for the devil. Our trouble is that our vision don't get clear 
till our own "chickens come home to roost." So long as they belong to 
some one else we are content to let some one else see after them. It 
should not take a personal visitation of some great calamity in our own 
home to wake us up. I know a preacher who has always opposed pro- 
hibition, worked and voted against it. Not long since his section went 
wet, and as a result there are three or four saloons in his justice pre- 
cinct. Not long ago his own boys went to one of these saloons, got 
drunk, came home and raised all kinds of Cain. The next day this good 
brother started out calling on the brethren, saying to them: "Brethren, 
something must be done. We have just got to do something with this 
saloon business, for they are ruining the country. We must get up a pe- 
tition and have an election and vote them out of here." What's the 
matter with the brother? Nothing, only his "chickens came home to 
roost." Just so long as some other mother's girl is trapped, sold and 
destroyed, or some one else's boy sent to a drunkard's grave, it makes no 

LOFC. 



78 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

difference with some people, and they pay no attention to it. Better 
look out, "Your own chickens may come home to roost." I heard a man, 
a member of the church, say that ''houses of ill-fame are a necessary evil." 
I asked him why so? He said, "For the protection of our wives and 
daughters." I said to him, "Well, if houses of ill-fame are a 'necessary 
evil,' then somebody's girl must be destroyed to provide this 'neces- 
sary evil,' and why not this girl be one of your daughters, and had not 
one of your daughters as well be sacrificed as the daughter of anyone 
else?" The trouble with this man is that he wanted the other fellow's 
chickens to come home to roost, and such a man's own chickens will not 
fail to come home to roost in some way or other. 

You ask what I am going to do about it? I ask, what are you going 
to do about it? I am going to work and vote for the annihilation of the 
liquor traffic, which is the ally of the white slave traffic, so long as I 
have strength and life, or until the liquor traffic and the traffic in pure 
girls no longer disgraces this country. Are you going to do this? I am 
advocating, with all the powers of my soul, the single standard of purity 
for both men and women, that husbands, fathers and sons should be as 
pure as they want their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters to be. 
Where do you stand? Are you for such a standard or are you against it? 
I stand for a law in every State in this Union severe enough to wipe 
out every house of ill-fame from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the 
Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Where do you stand and how do you stand 
on this? I stand for the protection of home, waves, mothers and children, 
and I will never stain the snow-white ballot placed in my hands with their 
blood or wet it with their tears. Where do you stand and how will you 
vote? 

I stand for a law to hang as high as Hainan the vile scoundrel and his 
accessories, before or after the fact, who trap, buy or sell pure, innocent 
girls into the slavery of the brothel. I want to see such a law in every 
State in the United States. Where do you stand? If you favor such a 
law, then go to work to nominate and elect men w T ho will pass such a 
law in your own State. Nominate and elect only pure men, men who 
stand for civic righteousness, for booze fighters, liquor dealers and their 
allies would never enact such a law. 

I want to place the information given in this little volume in every 
community in this land, from one end of it to the other. I want you to 
help me do this, because the people need to have the information, for much 
of it they positively do not know. I v/ant you to help me do this, be- 
cause I can not do it without your help. 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 79 

I stand for the thousands and thousands of American girls who have 
to make their own living in the world, and oftentimes have to help sup- 
port their mothers and little brothers and sisters. I would warn them 
against the traps, snares, nets, plots and pitfalls and temptations of the 
city. I am against that man or business that pays them starvation wages 
in order that he may coin more gold; for human life is more precious than 
money, and virtue and happiness more to be desired than fine gold. All 
of us are going to take one side of this question or the other. To say 
that we will take neither side means that we take the wrong side, for 
every life must be measured by what it does and not by what it does not 
do; not by what it gets out of the world, but by what it puts into the 
world for the common good and general welfare. 

This may be the last message from me to the people of this country, 
and if it should be, then let my last words be these: Let us take no un- 
certain stand for the right and against the wrong; be the good Samaritan 
to those down in the world, to those in pain, distress, misery and sorrow, 
to the disconsolate and the broken-hearted and to those of whom the 
Master said: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye did it unto Me." 

To the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters, what shall I say to you 
now? If I could, I would go to the mountains and the valleys and pluck 
therefrom the fairest flowers that wave and bend in the winds of Heaven — 
the vine, the rose and the immortelles — and with my OAvn hands I would 
weave them into garlands and crowns to bedeck the brow of every true, 
loyal and loving woman in all this land. In your right hand I would 
place the scepter of love and in your left hand a harp of a thousand 
strings, and I would sit me down at your feet and have you play and 
sing to me of "Mother, Home and Heaven." 

Finally, above all the wealth of this world, power, honor or glory, the 
one thing I most desire is to be always remembered by the people of my 
country while I live, and when I am dead that I may have a monument, 
not of granite or marble, but one living and abiding in the hearts and 
affections of my fellow countrymen; not because I have done mighty deeds 
of valor or heroism; not because I have ever aspired to greatness, power 
or fame, but because I have "bearded the lion in his den," and exposed 
the fearful, awful, black and damnable traffic in pure, innocent girls — the 
Black Plague of the American continent. 



80 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Conclusion. 

I have now come to the last chapter of this little volume. What I 
have said is every line the truth and it has been said honestly and for 
the purpose of being a blessing to those who read it. 

I have given some very important lessons and sound advice, both for 
the old and the young. I have sought to write to bless the home and 
the young people. Every line has had breathed on it a prayer that I 
might say the right thing in the right way. I am satisfied with the effort 
and I hope the reader is not disappointed. I have endeavored to tell a 
true, sad and plain story in a simple and plain way. I have faithfully 
warned parents against fostering upon their own dear children the drink 
appetite. I have plead with Christian people and ministers of the Gospel 
for the drunkard, for his wife, his children and his home. I have begged 
the saloon man for his own sake, for the sake of his family and for the 
sake of other men and their families, to quit the liquor business and do 
something else which will be a blessing to humanity and not a curse. I 
have plead with and for our boys and young men, that they may escape 
the ravages and the destruction caused by the drink habit, and that they 
may get the purest and best things out of this life. I have plead, as best 
I could, the cause of our dear girls and young women, and have advised 
them as any loving father should advise his own dear children. 

In memory I turn back the pages in the book of life till I come to 
my childhood days, standing once more at my mother's knee, and see her 
loving eyes looking tenderly into mine. I see her in the home as in days 
of old with the bloom of youth upon her cheeks and her life one perfect 
May day. I see her as she goes about, to and fro, in that ''old Kentucky 
home," gathering the sweet-scented flowers and apple blossoms. Again, 
I see her as she bends over my little bed with anxious look and aching 
heart and kisses my burning lips all scorched with fever. I see her again 
in the old church and hear her voice, melodious, sweet and clear, as 
she sings: 

"How tedious and tasteless the hours 
When Jesus no longer I see! 
Sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet flowers, 
Have all lost their sweetness to me. 



Or: 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 81 

The midsummer sun shines but dim, 

The fields strive in vain to look gay; 
But when I am happy in Him, 

December's as pleasant as May." 

"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in Hia excellent Word." 



I turn the book again, and I see my mother, old and gray, with eyes 
that are dim, with bowed form and feeble step. I see no more the blossom 
of youth upon her brow, but I see the eternal flowers bursting forth to 
bloom forever in the Paradise of God. I hear her sing again in a voice 
more sweet than ever before: 

"E'en down to old age all my people shall prove 
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love, 
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn, 
Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be borne." 

Yes, mother, home and childhood, God help me to help these. I love 
my country and its people, and there is no good that I would not have 
it and them possess, and there is no evil from which I would not have it 
and them escape, but I can not help loving Kentucky and Texas best of 
all. Kentucky, the home of my childhood, where -I played as a barefooted 
boy. Its rivulets and rills, its rocks and hills, its meadows and orchards, 
its homes and firesides, are all yet near and dear to me. It was here I 
spent my school days and here I grew into young manhoot and married. 
It is here where sleep many of my kindred, a sleep from which there is 
no waking till that eternal morn. 

Texas, beautiful, grand and glorious Texas! My adopted home, I will 
love thee forever ! Your soil is sacred to me, for beneath it sleeps my 
child, my little boy, and my dear father and brother. Texas, baptized in 
the blood of my kindred, my uncle, William, who fought under Crockett 
at the Alamo, whose body was consumed in the funeral pyre, whose fires 
shone around the world and placed the brightest star in the constellation 
of States. 

I have truthfully portrayed the traffic in pure, innocent white girls and 
its ally, the liquor traffic. I have made this little volume short on pur- 
pose that I may, by the help of the good people, place it in every home in 
this land. I would freely give it away were I able, but the last four years 



82 THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 

of my life, which I have donated to charity work in helping to better 
the condition of suffering and helpless women and children, and the ex- 
penses of these four years work, amounting to hundreds of dollars, which I 
have paid out of my own money, and the support of my family, make it 
impossible for me to give the book away only to those too poor to pay 
for it. 

I have labored for these four years to get child labor laws passed to 
prevent the employing of children in mines, factories, sweatshops, packing 
houses and in other occupations which destroy these children, physically, 
mentally and morally, or wholly incapacitates them for life and unfits 
them for fatherhood and motherhood. I am glad to say that during these 
past four years there have been passed better child labor laws in many 
of the States than ever before in our history. I do not say that I 
alone caused this to be done. I just did my best. I asked Congress to 
pass a law authorizing an investigation into the working condition of 
women and children in mines, sweatshops, packeries and factories. This 
law was passed by the last Congress. I do not say I caused it to be 
passed, but it was never passed before. I have labored hard for laws in 
the several States to be enacted to establish juvenile courts and reform 
schools for dependent, neglected and incorrigible children. Such laws 
have been enacted in several States during these four years. I don't say 
that I caused this to be done. I did all I could, for I thought it was my 
duty. 

We must now faithfully begin a campaign for those laws and policies 
mentioned in the chapter of this book which is headed "Remedy." We 
must join and close up our ranks and fight as never before on earth. 
There is no time for indifference or shirking. Let every man and woman 
to the frGnt, for the battle is strong and the cause is righteous. Let us 
fight to destroy the liquor traffic before it destroys us and all that is near 
and dear to us. Let us fight to wipe out the disgrace and put an end 
to the worst slavery now on the earth, trapping and selling innocent and 
unsuspecting white girls for immoral purposes. May God help us to do 
this. Let us work and labor to have laws enacted such as I have men- 
tioned, for the protection of home, mother, father and child. On with the 
battle. W^in, and we save this country from wreck, ruin and destruction; 
lose, and this government must fall from greed, graft, debauchery and 
drunkenness. 

I have been urged to send articles to every paper in this land, giving 
the people information such as is contained in this book. I will do this 



THE BLACK PLAGUE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. 83 

if you will help me do it. This is a great undertaking, but I will do it 
if the people will just stand by me and help me do it. It will take money 
to do this, and I have not got it of my own. I did have it, but I have 
used it to help those who could not help themselves. To send such articles 
to all the papers would put these awful sins and wrongs fully before the 
American people and when they once know of them they will do the rest. 
Every cent you want to send me will be used in this way to bless the 
homes, the mothers, wives and children. All the profits from the sale of 
this book will go the same way and to enable me to give it to the poor 
not able to pay for it. I know and, now you have read it, you also know 
that this book can not fail to bless every home and everybody who 
reads it. Will you help me place it in the homes, in the hands of fathers 
and mothers, boys and girls, young men and women? Please do not fail 
to do this for their sakes. Every fifty cents invested in this book will 
bless some home, some wife, some mother or child and it will bless you 
for sending it. If three books are sent for at one time, they can be had 
for $1. 

I now dedicate this little volume to the mothers of this land, and may 
the very God of peace and love be with them and roll away the sorrows 
of their lives and wipe the tears from their eyes. May a better and 
brighter day come to them, their homes and their children, and may joy, 
peace and happiness ever attend them in this world and a croAvn of ever- 
lasting glory, honor and happiness in the world to come. 

I now say good-by. I hope that it is not farewell, a long farewell, but 
if it is, and I should never see you in this life, let us live, strive and 
w T ork to meet up yonder in the Paradise of God. May the sweetest 
blessings of Heaven ever attend you all, and may you be safely kept in 
the path of love and duty till the Master calls. 



TO THE PUBLIC. 



Four years ago I conceived the idea of "The Sons and Daughters of 
the Golden Rule," whose constitution, principles and purposes I hereinafter 
set forth. This organization is chartered, and the charter is of record 
in the city of Austin, Texas. This charter is signed and duly acknowl- 
edged by fifty men and women, representing ten different States in the 
United States. 

I submit to you now that no secular organization has ever yet set 
forth a greater or more far-reaching work and purposes than is set forth 
in the twenty-five succeeding articles. It is an utter impossibility to 
carry out this work and these purposes without organization and unity 
of forces. It takes work and workers and means to carry on the work 
and to carry out these purposes. Are you for this work as is hereinafter 
set forth, or are you against it? If you are for it, we ask you to join 
in with us to make it the greatest possible success. We believe that 
we have presented to the individual man and woman a great opportunity 
to do far-reaching service for great good, a service that will be uplifting 
and which eternity alone can fully manifest. The constitution, princi- 
ples and purposes given herein, together with my book, "The Black Plague 
of the American Continent," will give you such information as you need 
in order that you may be a successful worker. 

Become a member now, get your certificate of membership and get 
others to become members. If you can devote your whole time to the 
work, write me and let me help you. 

I promise my people and my country the best and all that is within 
me, now and so long as I live, but without your help and co-operation 
I can not succeed. It takes co-operation and organization. 

May He who guides the actions and the destinies of men and of nations. 
ever keep us, this organization and its work, and may we all be true 
men and women, living and working to best serve our day and genera- 
tion, to make this world brighter, better and happier because we have 
lived. I am glad to present to you the following constitution, principles 
and purposes of The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule. 

Sincerely yours, 

D. F. SUTHERLAND, 

Quitman, Texas. 



CONSTITUTION, PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES OF THE SONS AND 
DAUGHTERS OF THE GOLDEN RULE. 



ARTICLE I. 

This organization shall be known as "The Sons and Daughters of the 
Golden Rule." 

ARTICLE II. 

Under its charter, The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule is a 
national organization in all of its works, principles and purposes. Not 
being bound by geographical lines, it comes to uplift humanity and to 
make the world better, purer, brighter, sweeter and happier because it 
has come. It comes to scatter sunshine and gladness into the lives and 
hearts of those borne down with distress, grief and sorrow, to take them 
by the hand and lift them up and help them to stand. It comes to 
rescue the perishing and to heal the broken-hearted. It comes as the 
friend of the home, the husband and father, the wife, the mother and 
her children. Its three brightest stars are Love, Sympathy and Kind- 
ness, with a heart to pity and a hand to help. 

ARTICLE III. 

The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule is both non-sectarian and 
non-political. It makes the life, the teachings and the philosophy of 
Jesus its "cloud by day and its pillar of fire by night." It asks, and 
it shall deserve, the full support and co-operation of all the churches 
and all Christian people everywhere. It believes in civic righteousness 
in human government, in the county, in the State and in the Nation, 
and it believes that the only way to secure such government is to select 
the purest, ablest, wisest and best men to make and to execute the 
laws; for "when the wicked rule the nations mourn." 

ARTICLE IV. 

The one motto of The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule is: "Do 
unto others as you would have them do unto you and yours under similar 
circumstances and conditions." It will be a great and a glorious day 
when this only true rule of life takes its proper place in the minds, 
hearts and doings of the people, governing their duties and relations to 
each other; a day when men, women and children shall not have to 
sacrifice their lives, their pleasure and their happiness in order that 
others may have more profits or enjoy more pleasure; a day when justice 
and mercy shall control the actions and relations of men, one towards 
another, and a day when we will do unto others as we would have them 
do unto us, were we in their place and they in ours. 



— 2— 

ARTICLE V. 

The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule believe in the single 
standard of purity for both men and women alike; that men should be 
as true to their wives as they would have their wives be to them, and 
that they should treat other men's sisters just as they would have their 
own sisters treated, and that all men everywhere should be the defend- 
ers of women and that none should be their traducers. 

We believe that it is as wrong as it is dangerous to drive her who 
has been destroyed from our doors and invite or permit her destroyer 
into our homes. If she who has been destroyed is barred from respecta- 
ble society, her destroyer should also be barred. If no gentleman would 
marry a prostitute, then no lady should marry a libertine, for the one 
is no worse than the other. We unflinchingly stand for one and the 
same standard of purity for both men and women. 

ARTICLE VI. 

We say that no man should be permitted to marry a woman, remain 
with her till he tires of her, then desert her without cause, get a divorce 
and then marry another only to do her likewise. Such a man is the 
worst of criminals, dangerous to society and to the sacredness of the 
marriage relation, and the law should declare him to be the criminal 
that he is, and when this crime is proven on him to the satisfaction of 
an honest court and jury, he should be made to suffer for his crime 
by being given an adequate number of years in the penitentiary, and 
forever be barred from destroying the life of some other girl by mar- 
riage. Thousands of girls are annually destroyed by unprincipled men 
who marry them with no other intention than to desert them in a 
short while, only to do some other girl likewise. This muchly marrying 
business so common among a large number of men and among some 
women should be stopped, and The Sons and Daughters of the Golden 
Rule declare war on this crime against home and against society, until 
such laws are enacted and enforced as will put an end to this diabolical 
and destructive practice. 

Marriage is the beginning and the foundation of the home and the 
family, ordained of God as one of the most sacred relations on earth, 
and this relation should not be severed by easy and loose divorce laws 
and methods now pertaining in most of the States. We favor the enact- 
ment and the enforcement of such divorce laws as will not sever the 
marriage relation except for proper and adequate cause, and which will 
prohibit second marriages where such cause did not exist. 

ARTICLE VII. 

This organization is opposed to child labor in factories, mines, packing 
houses, sweat shops and in other unhealthy and immoral places, which 
annually destroy hundreds of thousands of the white children in the 



— 3— 

United States, physically, mentally and morally, and which is rapidly 
deteriorating our race. We owe it to ourselves, to these children, to 
the best interest of society and to our government to make it possible 
for such children to be in school instead of destroying them or permit- 
ting them to be destroyed. The one million children now in these 
child-destroying occupations should be placed in school. We stand for 
the enactment and for the enforcement of such laws as will put an 
end to this child slavery and for putting such children in school. 

ARTICLE VIII. 

We oppose such foreign immigration to this country as lowers the 
standard of American manhood or the wages paid to American workmen, 
which is injurious to organized society and dangerous to American in- 
stitutions and government. We oppose such immigration, not only be- 
cause it is dangerous to our own country and people, but because it is 
equally injurious to the immigrants themselves. 

These people are far better off in their home land where they are 
acquainted with their own laws, manners, customs and with their own 
people, than they are after coming to a strange land, and in most cases 
without a doFar. We say that such immigration should be prohibited 
by appropriate laws enacted by Congress, and the sooner the better. 

ARTICLE IX. 

This organization believes in throwing around the hundreds of thousands 
of working girls who are forced to make their own way in the world, 
every safeguard and protection possible. Most of these girls go from 
the country and the country villages to the cities for employment in 
offices, shops, department stores, factories and other places. The temp- 
tations, snares, traps, drag-nets, plots and pitfalls set for them are 
alarming, and thousands of these girls are led "as a lamb to the slaugh- 
ter." They need protection and they must have it. 

ARTICLE X. 

We are unalterably opposed to the legalized liquor traffic in this coun- 
try, in the precinct, the county, the State and the Nation. We are 
opposed to the National government or to any State government selling 
permits to some of its citizens, at so much a permit, which enables them, 
without any fear of molestation, to engage in a business which destroys 
thousands of other citizens; which annually kills over 100,000 American 
boys and men; which yearly makes over 150,000 widows and orphans 
and reduces over 350,000 others to poverty or pauperism; which fills 
our jails and penitentiaries with its criminals and our asylums with its 
insane; which covers the land with broken-hearted wives, mothers, sisters 
and daughters on account of drunken husbands, sons, brothers and fathers, 
and fills many once happy homes with mourning and tears; which takes 



from the useful pursuits of Jife ten times more money than is paid back 
in revenues, to say nothing of what society has to suffer on account of 
the crimes it causes to be committed, and which is the ally of the worst 
form of slavery ever known on this continent, the traffic in pure, inno- 
cent white girls. (See Article XL) 

ARTICLE XL 

We oppose, with our whole soul, body, mind and strength, the traffic 
in pure, innocent and unsuspecting girls now going on and which has been 
going on in this country for years. We stand for the utter destruction 
of this white girl slavery, which is the worst form of slavery that ever 
disgraced this or any other land. We say that the drag-nets, plots, traps, 
snares, decoys and pitfalls used by the slave trappers and traders should 
be made known to all the people, and that this traffic in pure girls 
should be blotted out. We have faith in the people, and we believe that 
when they once fully understand the extent of this white girl slavery, 
its fearful and terrible horrors and tortures, they will speedily wipe it 
out of this country. We thought that when the Civil War was over 
that slavery had ended in the United States. Over forty years have 
passed, and human beings, pure, innocent white girls, are being trapped, 
sold and bought like cattle or negroes before the war, sold at so much 
per head, sold into the slavery of the brothel, bought by madams of 
houses of ill- fame or by wealthy libertines at the rate of over forty 
thousand annually, utterly and forever destroying these girls, wrecking 
thousands of homes and breaking thousands of hearts. We pledge our- 
selves that we will leave nothing undone which we can do to stop this 
slavery and to put an end to this slave trade. We ask for a law in 
each State making the trapping, the buying or the selling of innocent 
girls into houses of prostitution or to wealthy libertines a felony and the 
punishment fixed at death or a life sentence in the penitentiary for the 
trapper, the buyer and the seller. We say that he who traps and sells 
an innocent girl into the slavery of the brothel is worse than the midnight 
assassin, and that there is no punishment too severe for such characters. 
We say to get this law enacted in each of the several States, that only 
pure men should be selected as members of the Legislature. 

ARTICLE XII. 

This organization favors the annihilation of all houses of ill-fame in 
every town and city in the United States. We believe that the law 
is now sufficient to accomplish this purpose in most of the States, and 
we say that this law should be enforced, that only such men be elected 
who will enforce the law. We say that where the law is not sufficient 
to put houses of ill-fame out of business, that it should be made severe 
enough to do this and then enforced. We say that no house of ill 
repute can thrive in any town or city where the sale of intoxicating 
liquors is prohibited and where* the law is enforced. We say that men 



—5— 

who patronize houses of ill-fame are as guilty as those who run such 
houses, and that such men should be apprehended and punished. We 
stand for laws severe enough in each of the several States to keep men 
out of these dens of infamy, and which will expose and punish those 
who violate it. Those who say that houses of ill-fame are "a necessary 
evil" should be willing to help furnish the sacrifices to supply their sup- 
posed and imaginary "necessary evil." 

ARTICLE XIII. 

The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule is opposed to children 
being put in prison with hardened criminals and to working juvenile 
criminals on the public streets and roads in the chain-gang. We contend 
for an effective and humane juvenile court system for each one of the 
several States, and we say that such courts can not be either effective or 
humane without providing training schools for the boys and industrial 
schools for the girls who are brought before the juvenile courts. We 
say that persons who are legally responsible for the child, whether that 
person be the parent, guardian or some other person, should be held 
liable for the delinquency of such child, and that such person should 
have to suffer the penalty, and not the child. Parents who bring children 
into the world should be forced to care for them when they will not 
do so otherwise. 

ARTICLE XIV. 

We believe in and commend charity work among the poor and needy, 
but we believe that by far the most effective, humane and wisest charity 
work should be directed along preventive lines, destroying and eradi- 
cating social poverty -breeding conditions which force so many thousands 
to where they must have assistance or perish. We say, remove the 
causes which produce poverty, those that can and should be removed, 
and three-fourths of all poverty will disappear, and with it the need 
of assistance. 

This organization does not believe in waiting for the poverty mills to 
grind out their hundreds and thousands of poverty-stricken people, men, 
women and children^ then gather them up and care for them. We say 
stop the mills and stop this grinding. We believe in keeping people out 
of these mills, rather than in caring for them after they have been ground 
out. We say, stop the mills, the gin mills, the child labor mills, the 
immigration mills, the divorce mills, the prostitution mills, the slave 
trappers' mills, the double standard mills and the many times geared 
matrimonial mills, and 75 per cent of all necessary charity work can be 
dispensed with, and with it millions of dollars for other useful pursuits 
of life, which are now yearly spent in relieving distress. 

ARTICLE XV. 

This organization stands for the home, the church and the school, and 
against the enemies of the home, the church and the school. It stands 



— 6— 

for the wife, the mother and her children, and will defend and protect 
them from those whose onlv business is to wreck, ruin and destroy. 
It comes with a message of love and to scatter sunshine and gladness 
into the lives and hearts of the people, that their days on earth may 
be brighter, sweeter, better and happier. 

ARTICLE XVI. 

We favor the enactment of a law in each of the several States to ap- 
prehend and punish worthless and brutal men who marry girls or women 
and force them to live lives of shame, while their husbands lay around 
drinking saloons and gambling houses and live upon the proceeds of 
their wives' shame. We say that when any man gets so low down and 
brutal as to marry a girl or woman and force her to a life of prostitu- 
tion for his and her support, or who is willing and consents for his wife 
to live such a life for their support, such a man should be sent to the 
penitentiary, and we ask for a law that will put him there, and forever 
debar his marrying again. Such characters are numerous and can be 
found in almost every city in this country, and in some cities by the 
hundreds. We say that such are an abomination and a burning disgrace 
to all civilized communities, and it should be stopped. 

ARTICLE XVII. 

This organization not only stands for the destruction of the white 
girl slave traffic, but we shall use all possible means to set these girls 
free who have been trapped and sold and who are detained as prisoners 
in houses of ill-fame. Such girls have done no wrong. They are the 
victims of those who trapped and sold them into these places, against 
their will and without their knowledge or consent, where their condition 
is shocking to contemplate, and the horrors and the tortures which they 
are forced to undergo can not be described. We say that such girls 
should be rescued from these infamous dens and returned to their homes 
where they have a home. If they have no home, then one should be 
found for them. 

ARTICLE XVIII. 

National Officers. 

The national officers of this organization shall be a President, three 
Vice-Presidents, a Secretary and a Treasurer. 

ARTICLE XIX. 

It shall be the duty of the President to supervise all the general work 
of this organization, preside over all of its national conventions, to select 
and appoint all necessary officers and fill all vacancies, to select and 
appoint organizers and do such other things as are to the best interest 
of this organization and its work. 



The First Vice-President shall have charge of the Educational Depart- 
ment, the Second Vice-President of the Legislative Department and the 
Third Vice-President of the Law-enforcing Department. 

ARTICLE XX. 

Membership. 

AH persons shall be considered members of this organization who con- 
tribute as much as $1.00 per year to carry on the work and to carry out 
the purposes herein set forth. Each person so contributing shall be en- 
rolled by the Secretary, giving name, postoffice address and the amount 
contributed, and he shall receive a Certificate of Membership which will 
commend him or her to the good will, care and protection of all members 
of this organization everywhere. Each person sha-1 have the right to 
designate the part of this work to which his or her contribution is to be 
applied, and same shall be applied as directed. 

ARTICLE XXL 

Patrons. 

Those who contribute $10.00 or more in any one year to this work 
shall be considered Patrons, and shall receive a Certificate of Member- 
ship showing that such person so contributing is a Patron, and be enrolled 
by the Secretary as a Patron. 

ARTICLE XXII. 
Children. 

It is very important to children that they be connected with some 
worthy undertaking early in life, which will mould and develop them 
into the best possible material for honorable and useful manhood and 
womanhood, and which will interest them, be beneficial to them and help 
them to be useful to others and to society and to their country. 

The Sons and Daughters of the Golden Rule includes the chi dren as 
members and is for the children the same as for men and women. 

ARTICLE XXIII. 

This organization is chartered under the charter name, United Chari- 
ties of America. Its working and fraternal name is, The Sons and Daugh- 
ters of the Golden Rule, which name fully expresses its rel.it ions and 
duties which all of its members owe to each other and to humanity. 

ARTICLE XXIV. 

The books of this organization shall be audited at least once a year 
and a full report be issued showing where all funds come from and the 



— 8— 

uses to which the same has been applied, which report shall be published 
for the benefit of all interested parties. 

ARTICLE XXV. 

There are and will be those who wish to aid this work who do not 
wish Certificates of Membership, and who do not want their names or 
amount contributed by them made known to the public. The wishes of 
all such persons shall be and will be cheerfully respected at all times. 



REFERENCES. 



If you don't know me or of me, you may read the following: 

"I am deeply concerned in your work for the poor and unfortunate ones 
of our nation." — J. M. Thompson, Editor Youth's Guardian and Friend, 
Greenfield, Ind. 

"I trust that all your efforts for suffering humanity may be successful.'' 
— E. P. Haggard, Secretary American Baptist Missionary Union, Boston, 
Mass. 

"We hope that all your efforts may meet with that success which they 
deserve." — Susanna M. D. Fry, Cor. Sec. National W. C. T. U., Evanston, 
111. 

"Your cause is certainly a worthy one that has my interest." — Cora A. 
Wells, Managing Editor Church Messenger, Providence, R. I. 

"It will give me pleasure to do all I can to help in such a noble cause. 
Call on me for what I can do, and it shall always be done to the best 
of my ability." — J. G. Baird, Carolina Pythian, Charlotte, X. C. 

"I wish you success and God's blessing." — C. F. Y r oder, Editor Brethren 
Evangelist, Ashland, Ohio. 

"I trust that your work may help many of the helpless." — J. A. Myer, 
Superintendent Chicago Training School, Chicago, 111. 

"Well might Texas rejoice that you have entered into this broader field 
of labor to help better the conditions of suffering humanity."' — Mattie 
Sharpley, Sherman, Texas. 

"He is one of the greatest philanthropists of this age and has cast 
himself upon the surging sea of life to rescue the perishing." — Mattie A. 
Leath, Eureka Springs, Ark. 

"We, the members of the First Baptist Church of Eureka Springs. 
Ark., in these resolutions passed by this church in conference assembled^ 
May 30, 1906, hereby express our confidence in and our esteem for Hon. D. 
F. Sutherland. We know him to be a man of high moral character and 
worthy of the esteem of the public. We most heartily endorse him and 
his work. Adopted by the church this 30th day of May, 1906. J. E. 
Denham, Pastor; J. B. Pendergrast, Church Clerk." 

"He is a man of great energy, sound judgment, honest and reliable. 
We take pleasure in commending him to the people of this country." — 
W. M. Lloyd, President First State Bank; Jno. W. Smart, Cashier, Quit- 
man, Texas. 



Eome references: A. G. Wright, druggist; J. R. Anason, merchant; 
Walter Corley, County C lerk; Rev. Church Wood, pastor Baptist Church; 
J. C, Wright, District Clerk; J. T. Kirkpatrick, pastor M. E. Church, 
South; L. F. Lloyd, County Treasurer; J. 0. Rouse, County Judge; Drs. 

C. 1). Lipscomb and J. B. Goldsmith, or any other reputable citizen of 
Quitman, Texas, my home town. 

Send all communications and address all orders for books to 

D. F. SUTHERLAND, 

Quitman, Texas. 

This writer and his work are positively endorsed by more than twenty 
State Governors and thousands of other people. 

Note. — I wish to apologize to those who have been waiting for this 
little book longer than they should have waited. I assure you all that 
the fault is not mine. I was forced to change from one publishing house 
to another. As to why the first company did not publish the book is not 
for me to say. This company kept my manuscript for two months and 
did nothing. Every cent of their money was in bank. 

1 am now getting ready to put out the second edition of 5000 copies, 
and I ask the good women of this country to help me place it in every 
home. The Author. 

Send all orders for "The Black Plague of the American Continent'* to 

D. F. Sutherland, Quitman, Texas. Single Copy, 50 cents; three copies 
tor $1, sent by mail to any part of the United States. 



Je '08 V 



